Recycled
by Gatac
Summary: AU, companion to the "Rebuilt" fics. How did Sara Corvus become the self-titled "first bionic woman"? Updated with Chapter 5!
1. Chapter 1

Disclaimer: You should be read up on "Big Sister" up to Chapter 7. Bad language and violence ahead.

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><p>December 10th 2004, 0930 AST (Zulu + 0300)<p>

14 miles southeast of Fallujah, Al Anbar Governate, Iraq

6th Engineer Support Battalion, USMC

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><p>It was an empty ditch next to a sandy road, and as good a place for taking a piss as any, really. Private John Magee stood at the top, legs slightly bent, and had just managed to open the fly of his pants. Around him, ancient fields stretched away from the road, with the occasional small cluster of buildings and shacks, but there were no people working them to watch his deed. Wearing 40 pounds of gear and armor, with a rifle dangling from its sling and smacking him in the side whenever he made a sudden move, the entire affair was proving to be rather difficult to execute. Having his new teammates just a few feet away in their parked Humvee and their eyes on his back didn't help his anxiety either.<p>

"Don't get sand in your lady parts now, Maggy!" shouted one; John tried to ignore it.

"This is taking forever," another added. "You gotta learn how to execute a _tactical_ roadside piss, boot."

"Can I just have a minute here, guys?" John shouted back.

"You've had your minute already!" the first one replied. "Come back in and just piss your pants on the way!"

"I'm the gunner, you moron!" John shouted. "I'd piss on your head." Having finally gotten into position, he started to relieve himself into the ditch, wetting the slightly damp ground at the bottom.

"Don't promise that to Pieper, boot, he's into that shit."

"Fuck you, Diaz," PFC Jimmy Pieper – the driver – yelled.

"You ain't gotta pretend, man, you know I'm cool with perverts. I've got 50 gigs of the sickest shit on this planet squirreled away for morale and recreation. Goes for you, too, boot. _Mi_ harddrive _es su_ harddrive."

"Everybody shut up!" came the third voice. It was that of a woman, barely, the team leader sitting in the passenger seat of the Humvee. Underneath the gear and the grime, the best indicator for her gender was a lack of stubble. "Magee, what's the holdup?"

"Coming!" John shouted. At least zipping up was quick and didn't get anything caught; he jogged back to the Humvee and got inside. Along the way, he earned a small glare from the team leader – Lance Corporal Sara Corvus. Jimmy Pieper up front just gave him a dirty grin and shifted into gear.

"Why'd you drink that much anyway?" Pieper asked as the Humvee started rolling down the road. "You drink all day, you piss all day, that ain't rocket science."

"Sergeant said four quarts of water a day," John replied, earning a nod from the last member of the fire team – PFC Mike Diaz. "Hydration."

"Fuck hydration, we got air con," Pieper opined. "Hey, Lance –"

"Shut it," Corvus snapped back. "And no music, either."

"Damn, what crawled up your ass today, Lance?" Pieper asked. "You don't like bridge recon anymore? Is it **us**? We can change! We can become all sophisticated and emotionally honest and shit, I know you chicks dig that."

"Wow, that's some nice things coming out of your mouth today, Pieper," Corvus replied. "Suck any good dicks lately?"

"Hey, now," John said.

"The Corporal's hung over, boot," Diaz said. "First thing she'll recon today is the side of the bridge to get rid of her breakfast and feed the local ecosystem. 'course, with those DFAC eggs she loves so much, that'll probably kill everything downstream. Little shock and awe for those hajji fish."

"Uh, Corporal," John said, but trailed off when he saw Diaz look at him, as if to rescind the previous nod.

"What?" Corvus said, then pinched the bridge of her nose. "Look. I **was** drinking last night and I feel like shit now. Diaz is a dick, but he's right."

"See, Maggy?" Pieper said.

"And Pieper's just a dick," Corvus added. "Further questions, marine?"

"Well," John said, gathering some courage, "I'm just getting the impression I'm the only **marine** who actually wants to be out here. You know, doing the job, giving a damn? So I wanted to ask what's up with that."

Corvus groaned.

"I got this, Corporal," Diaz said, then turned to face John. "Look, boot, don't tell us about motivation on your first fucking ride. We talk a lot of shit, get used to it. Shut up and learn. You want 'All Oorah, all the time!' motards, get yourself to the road crews. We're out here alone because it keeps us away from the bullshit."

"The bullshit, huh?" John asked, already half suspecting the answer. "Okay, whatever, I'm game. Tell me about the bullshit, that I may learn from your wisdom, sensei."

"The bullshit, that's right," Diaz said with a nod. "The bullshit is everywhere, my son. It surrounds, and in small doses, nourishes us. Where it pools and becomes concentrated, though, the mean green weenie emerges from a whole stinking lake of bullshit and goes straight for your _culo_ like a laser-guided fucking supersonic missile. You want to hear about bullshit? There's our fearless leader coming up on being an eight-year Lance Corporal, and every morning on the way to the motor pool I have to watch her salute four-year Sergeants from fucking Intel with a straight face. Two paygrades higher with half the time in the fleet. Breaks my fucking heart. So, what's wrong here, boot? See, Intel gets to promote everything with a pulse while we have to fight for every stripe. Maybe **our** pipeline would suck less if we had more than half **our** guys leave after their first tour, too. Maybe that would help! Thoughts, Pieper?"

"Good start, Diaz," Pieper replied, "but it'll only really be equal if we get to stay on base all day for sucking on staff cock and writing awesome EPR bullets about our kickass slideshows!"

"Oh," Magee replied. "Okay, I'll give you that. But our own promotions - I mean, the scores –"

"Yeah, we all looked at the cutting scores today, boot," Diaz said. "Lance to proper Corporal for us engineer types is sitting pretty at 1450."

"See, that's good information, because 1450 - that's doable," John countered. "And you didn't even have to make a dick joke to go with it."

"Of course it's fucking doable," Diaz replied, "and guess what, our fearless leader **does** go above and beyond that. But no promotion for her, either! See, something as simple and straightforward as score just doesn't matter if your CO has kept you non-rec'd since before we all deployed to this hajji shithole. And that's why, after more than 7 years in the Fleet, our beloved Lance Corporal Sara Corvus -"

"- second award and richer in experience for it –" Pieper added.

"- is not developing professionally and as a warrior in this corps."

"Any particular reason for the non-rec?" John asked. "If that's not too private…"

"Drinking problem," Pieper said. "And some attitude. That's it."

"A shitty reason, just more proof the brass hates her," Diaz said. "I've seen plenty of marines skate on shit like this. Now, there **was** her telling us to skip the Master Guns's Jesus brief last month in favor of doing our jobs outside the wire. Which we do give a fuck about, boot, just to clear that up. But, yeah, that went over well. The Corps has its head so far up its own ass that it preaches Chesty Puller and then tells us we can't have hands in our pockets because it looks unprofessional. Like anyone gives a fuck."

"I get it, guys, I'm a regular fucking tragedy," Corvus said, cutting the chatter off. "Another fine Marine Corps day, fuck my life, yadda yadda yadda. Enough already. I think Magee got it about five minutes ago – so can you two stop fucking complaining on my behalf for a few while we're working? Pieper, how much further?"

"Still one klick out," Pieper replied, switching to business mode.

"Copy," Corvus said. "Magee, get your ass up to the turret. Diaz, just shut up."

"Copy that, Corporal," Diaz said. John gave him another look, then maneuvered himself off his seat into the middle of the passenger cabin, climbing up into the ring-shaped hole in the roof – the machine gun's turret mount, and affixed to it the heaviest firepower within the next 5 miles. He steadied himself, leaning against the back of the turret ring.

The ride was bumpier than going on a paved road through a city at convoy speed, but John coped well enough; he had his goggles drawn over his eyes already, but got himself a nice faceful of sand before he thought to draw up his shemagh to cover his nose and mouth. Gloved hands reached for the controls on his weapon – the M2HB heavy machinegun or "Ma Deuce", a beast of a gun. The M2HB fed from a heavy steel can mounted on its left side, eating cartridges that were almost as long as John Magee's hand. John, ever eager to make a good first impression, had actually listened to the advice of his predecessor and checked the gun prior to leaving the base – barrel, headspace, timing, all properly adjusted, and besides, there was no chance to do any of that now, not in a moving vehicle on a dusty road. Instead, John just enjoyed the satisfying feeling of grabbing the charging handle and pulling it back with gusto, chambering the second round of the belt. The first was an empty casing, for safety while loading the belt, and it fell out the right side of the weapon, together with its portion of the belt's disintegrating links. He would have heard it ping off the metal roof, if the Humvee wasn't so loud by itself.

"Did you just charge the Deuce, Magee?" Corvus shouted from below.

"Uh," John stammered. "Yes, Corporal, M2 is charged and ready to fire!"

"Don't do that again!" Corvus shouted back. "We're all holding our fire like good little marines! Everyone acknowledge."

"Holding fire, Corporal," John said.

"Holding fire," Diaz said.

"Holding my **dick**," Pieper replied.

"Oh, thanks for that, Pieper," Corvus shouted.

"What? I've got both hands on the wheel, Corporal. Couldn't shoot a hajji if I tried right now. 'cause, if he gets in our way -"

"This ain't GTA, _papi_, remember that," Diaz said.

"I'm just kidding, dude."

"No, you're just shutting up," Corvus said. "Both of you, Jesus fuck. Do you see anything, Magee?"

Private John Magee was still impressed by the thought of being deployed so close to a legendary river, the Euphrates – the Western-Southern border of Mesopotamia, cradle of civilization. Standing on the artificial island in Camp Baharia, an ex-vacation resort for the Ba'athist regime's faithful, he had looked south and thought that he was only a few miles away from the stuff of legend. Now, his first look "up close" was a vague blue line in the distance, obscured by clusters of palm trees and the dust kicked up by their vehicle. Their goal was a long, low-slung bridge crossing the river ahead. In a land chiefly divided by its major rivers, controlling bridges mattered.

"Magee!" Corvus shouted. "Report."

"We're good, Corporal!" John replied.

Where the road ended and the bridge began, the density of palm trees increased; it looked like a small grove planted there. However, John could also see the upcoming heartbreaker. The bridge was demolished not far from their northern approach, which made this road a dead end for the time being. The Humvee slowed down gradually and finally came to a rolling stop about a hundred feet away from the bridgehead.

"Diaz, with me," Corvus said. "Keep your eyes open, Magee."

"Copy," both men said, almost in unison. Pieper settled back into his seat and turned the A/C up a little.

Corvus and Diaz climbed out of the truck and walked off toward the demolished bridge. Corvus kept her rifle swinging from its sling, being that she was busy browsing one of her front pockets for her notepad. By contrast, Diaz gripped his rifle tightly, and his eyes continually scanned the surroundings.

"What's the boot's deal?" Diaz asked.

"I don't know," Corvus said. "But he seems decent enough."

"Decent's not good," Diaz replied. "We're light as is, Lance."

"We'll manage."

The river was straight ahead, down a steep slope. Corvus's eyes were on the bridge. With a few glances, she staked out the major operative parameters and jotted them down on her notepad. _Stone arch bridge, two lanes, major damage along multiple arches, impassible to all traffic. Total span: 1,200 feet._

"That damage looks recent," Corvus said.

"Fucking hajjis," Diaz muttered.

Corvus rolled her eyes. "We call them 'insurgents', Diaz."

"I'm just calling this spade a fucking shovel, Lance."

"No, you're working your way through some sort of 'Hajji' quota and I don't like that," Corvus said. "If you talk that way around us, how are you going to act when we run into anyone out here? Not very fucking professional, I'll bet."

Diaz considered that for a moment. "Nice speech, Lance," he said. "Coming from you."

"Yeah, but I'm still right, and most of all I don't want Magee to get up to this, too," Corvus said. "Come on, we have to look at the abutment."

The two of them seemed to disappear down the slope, and back at the Humvee, John grew a little tenser on the M2HB. He felt a little like a dog abandoned at a rest stop, being that he was in the rough geographic center of nowhere without his team leader in sight. It wasn't that he had grown overly attached to Lance Corporal Corvus in the two hours he'd known her, but being a Private without someone around to bark orders at him felt distinctly wrong.

"Yo, Maggy!" Pieper shouted from the cab below. "You wanna listen to some tunes while the Lance is away?"

"Yeah," John replied while his eyes still tried to focus on that elusive "enemy" he'd been told would be out in the desert in force. "Yeah, that sounds good," he added.

"Okay," Pieper said. "We got Panthera, we got Megadeth, Metallica -"

"Do you have any classic rock?" John said.

"Lemme check!" Plastic hit plastic a few dozen times as Pieper audibly sorted through his stack of CDs. "We got Allman Brothers, and we got Bon Jovi, if that counts."

"Allman Brothers!" John said.

John didn't see the muzzle flash, but felt something stab through his vest just the same. He had no frame of reference and didn't know what to expect – the pain was slow in arriving, it seemed. Mostly, he felt pressure, as if his armored vest was suddenly a few sizes too small. It was only when the distant sound of the gunshot arrived half a second later that his brain fired the "You done got **shot**, moron" routine. His legs sagged under him, and then he crumpled down the hatch and fell onto the Humvee's backseat row.

Jimmy Pieper really wanted to shout "Fuck!" The problem was that the gunshot (singular) had been used to signal several more insurgents (plural) to pop up from their hiding places in the field to the east and start hosing down the Humvee with bullets (lottaleadal). And while Pieper had never been top of the class in, well, anything, God had blessed him with slick reflexes. The "Fuck!" vocalization was held up as low priority, and his body instead used the split second to hurl itself through the cab and against the passenger side door, flinging it open and dumping Pieper into the dust. Pieper scrambled for cover behind the rear wheel assembly before the autopilot disengaged.

**Then** he shouted "Fuck!"

At the bridgehead, Corvus and Diaz reacted, too. Diaz easily snapped up his rifle and sent single shots into the field, howling "Contact east!" all the while. Corvus was slightly behind him, having to drop her notepad and pen and only then bring her rifle up. The urge to sprint back to the Humvee together was great, but Corvus stood her ground. Staying with Diaz would have made them, effectively, one single target, but this way, every step Diaz took opened up their field of fire more and took him closer to the Humvee.

However, two guns were not enough to properly suppress the whole field. Better than nothing, sure, but not enough. The return fire came swiftly; Corvus felt several bullets whip past her and one dinged her helmet. The sudden realization that she was still standing – and with that, silhouetting herself against the river behind her – was enough motivation for Corvus to hit the deck and roll to the side, tumbling down the slope a little until she managed to arrest her movement. That left only Diaz firing, and when Corvus managed to crawl back up the ridge, it was just in time to see Diaz get slugged by multiple hits and tumble to the ground, a little shy of halfway to the Humvee. More shots buried themselves in the ridge next to her, and she slid down again behind cover.

Pieper winced when his friend went down. He had shared a glance with Diaz just before that, and now things were looking – well, insert your favorite colorful way to say "very bad". To make matters worse, his carbine was still inside the Humvee. He figured there were at least five attackers, plus the sniper, all waiting for any sign of movement from behind the most conspicuous object in a five-mile radius. It was funny how his brain could get him out of immediate danger and assess the same quite accurately, but couldn't spare the neurons to grab his gun before making him bail out. At least the enemy fire had stopped for the moment.

"Pieper, come in!" Corvus's voice called through his helmet radio. "Need your status!"

"I'm up, Lance," Pieper replied, "but my M4 is in the truck."

"You got eyes on Diaz and Magee?" Corvus asked.

"Maggy went down first, no eyes on him. I can see Diaz moving, but he's down and he's exposed. Where are you, Lance?"

"Pinned down behind the ridge," Corvus said. "Pieper, if I cover you, can you get Diaz?"

Pieper froze for a second and looked right at the distant body of Diaz, slowly rolling in the dirt. Well, could he?

"You read me, Pieper?"

"Negative on the rescue, Lance," Pieper replied. "Can't reach him."

"Can you get your gun?" Corvus asked.

"Yeah," Pieper said. "Yeah. I think I can reach the Deuce, too."

"No, that's too risky," Corvus said. "They probably still have the sniper zeroed in on that, he'll shoot you before you can do us any good."

"Please say you got a plan, Lance."

"Yeah. Yeah, I have a plan. I cover you, you get into the truck and grab your gun and the survey kit. Then you're going to get on the binocs and spot for me. If we're lucky, I'll have a shot at the sniper. Once I take him down, I can cover you again, you grab the Deuce and lay down some fire."

"Okay," Pieper said. "Right, I got it. Just say the word, Lance."

Back at the bridgehead, Corvus slapped a fresh magazine into her rifle and took a few deep breaths. She rolled onto her belly, drew up her right leg and dug the boot into the slope beneath, finding purchase in the loose soil after a few inches of travel. "Go go go!" she shouted into the radio, then stood up and opened fire at the field, gaining the brief satisfaction of seeing a few men drop into the dirt to avoid her attack. But it didn't take long for the return fire to come and force her back down; her eyes registered a distant muzzle flash way out in the field just before the sniper's shot whistled past her head. While bullets slammed into the dirt above her, Corvus quickly stripped the magazine and fed another fresh one.

"Pieper, come in," she radioed. "What's your status?"

"Yeah, I got it," Pieper said. "Maggy's bleeding, it's pretty bad, Lance."

Corvus allowed herself a singular "Fuck!", then got back on the radio. "Copy that, Pieper. I need that sniper spotted ASAP. I think I got a shot."

"You sure you can take him out?" Pieper asked.

Corvus chuckled softly. "Every marine's a rifleman, right?"

Corvus craned her head around, looking for a better vantage point than her current position. The slope to the right of her seemed to come up a little higher with a bit of brush on it; not much, but she wasn't in the position to go looking for a better perch. She inched forward, going up the slope to the small bump. It didn't feel good to drag her rifle through the dirt in the process, but holding it in her arms would have caused too much visible motion. Intermittently, bullets struck just a few feet to her left where she'd gone down the slope, but as far as she was concerned, this was a good sign. For one, it meant they were unsure how to proceed and running too low on ammo to keep just hosing down everything. And it meant they hadn't spotted her new position – that gave her one shot before the inevitable counterfire. Gingerly, Corvus maneuvered her rifle past her and to the front, poking its muzzle out of the brush and setting the stock against her shoulder. Her rifle didn't have any hi-tech optics, just the iron sights. That suited Corvus just fine - it was how she had learned to shoot. At least the slight elevation advantage helped her gain a better view of the fields to the east, and with a bit of focus, she managed to spot five men lying in wait, none daring to fire. Her breath slowed down. If they saw her before she could take out the sniper...

"Son of a bitch sighted," Pieper radioed. "Reference point is cluster of four palm trees east-north-east, one with white...something...on the bark."

Corvus's rifle swung almost imperceptibly. "Got it," she whispered. She could barely make out the white splotch in the matchstick collection with the sun almost dead behind the sniper. 400 meters, she estimated.

"Ten meters to the left, small hill. Covered under a green blanket."

Again her rifle wandered slightly. Her eyes strained to make out anything on the hill, until she followed the contours and found that the top didn't fit the hill's natural curvature. With that spotted, the small black spot had to be the shadow under the blanket where the sniper was looking through. She couldn't make out a rifle or a face at all. "Target in sight. Range?"

"420 meters," Pieper radioed back.

Corvus worked the shot in her head. At that range, bullet drop was a big factor; Corvus had qualified on point targets at 400 meters at the range and adjusted her aim upward according to that. Sure, the air here was a little less dense, given the higher temperature, but she hoped that wouldn't throw off her aim too much. The mechanical accuracy of her rifle couldn't be helped, so she decided against worrying about it. That left the wind.

"Any wind?" she whispered. "Check the palm trees."

"It's the desert, Lance. They're...swaying to the left a little."

Corvus made a scientific wild-ass guess and shifted her aim a smidge to the right.

Corvus sharpened her eyes and tuned everything out. Her mind cleared as if by magic. Breathe in. Breathe out. Breathe in. Breathe out and hold it...hold it...

She smoothly pulled the trigger. The muzzle flash snapped her back to reality, and she pushed off again, rolling and taking another tumble down the slope as the remaining opponents opened fire at her perch. This time, the tumble proved harder to stop, almost taking her into the Euphrates before she managed to arrest her fall. Corvus was bruised, breathless and doped up to the gills with adrenaline. Then there was Pieper shouting in her ear.

"Holy shit! Holy **shit**!" he whisper-shouted over the renewed gunfire; muffled sounds of him scrambling back to cover behind the Humvee carried over the radio. "You got him, Lance! Oorah! Scratch one camelfucker!"

At this point, the attackers must have realized that their plan was completely off the rails, and that there was nothing to gain from waiting any longer. Shouts mixed with gunfire; Corvus didn't have to listen to Pieper panicked call to know what was happening. They were charging without any sense of restraint, playing a whole damn concerto in 7.62x39mm. They still focused their fire on the Humvee, and the best Pieper could do was cower behind it and pray to God that the dozens of bullets with his name on them wouldn't get through.

Lance Corporal Sara Corvus figured she had ten seconds before they would overrun her position and kill her. She decided to make the most out of them.

Others might have bellowed a mighty war cry, but Corvus stayed silent when she scrambled up the slope and started firing. She was deep in the zone; saving her team was all that mattered. With her first look at the situation, she made out six men with Kalashnikov rifles on the move towards Diaz. Her eyes locked onto the one closest to her fallen team mate, and her aim followed. She pulled the trigger, and a three-round burst screamed downrange. Two bullets hit the man in the chest, ending his life; one flew just past him and nicked another one's arm. Her eyes flicked to the next target and her gun followed. Again, she pulled the trigger, and another man dropped to the ground bleeding. She saw bullets fly past her and imagined that she could see the scars the rifling had left on them. There was fear, yes, but it couldn't compete with a much stronger feeling: being in control.

In the middle of the hailstorm, four bullets hit her. Three flattened against the strike plate in her vest, the fourth buried itself in a magazine pouch. She kept going.

Of the four men that she still recognized as moving targets, two were making the smart move, dropping down on their bellies to reduce their profile. It didn't matter. That still left two easy targets and more than enough rounds in her magazine to cut them down. She sprayed them with supersonic lead, turning one's neck into a vague pink cloud of meat and blood suspended in the air for one horrifying moment, while the other took several bullets to his side and spun out in a brutal mockery of a pirouette. She had reached Diaz, who was now doing his damndest to get to his feet and grab his own gun to help her. Her rifle gave up on the home stretch, choking three bullets away from an empty magazine on a misfeed. Corvus had no time to fix that, but that didn't stop her either. She had to get Diaz and herself to the Humvee. Nothing else mattered.

She took two more rounds to the chest and another on her helmet while she dropped her rifle into its sling and drew her pistol from the holster strapped to the front of her vest. Her left hand snagged the "Oh shit!" handle on the back of Diaz's armor without her having to look and pulled him to his feet. Her pistol snapped off round after round at the remaining enemies. It didn't nearly match their remaining firepower, but such pesky details were kept carefully at bay by her mind, focused as it was on dominating the situation as long as possible. Diaz added a few hip-fired bursts from his rifle as the two of them moved toward the Humvee. By now, the return fire was weaker, less focused on trying to hit them and more to entertain the illusion that the insurgents were still in the fight. Finally, they made it behind the relative safety of the Humvee. Corvus helped Diaz lie down on the ground, and only then let her exhaustion catch up with her.

"Lance! Lance!" Pieper screamed somewhere in the distance; Corvus fought her throat for breath. "They're retreating!"

"Diaz," she croaked, reaching for her own armor's quick release. "Check Diaz." She finally got her vest off, took a look at it and skipped counting the impacts. What little she could still feel of her chest felt like an elephant had stood on her, but her shirt was still intact – nothing had gone through the armor. Suddenly, monkeying around in 40 pounds of battle rattle every day felt justified. Sporadic gunshots still flew over the Humvee, but those were the last gasps of a failed assault turning into a rout.

"I'm good," Diaz said, raising his voice. "No thanks to your ass, Pieper."

Corvus gave Diaz a quick glance. More than anything, he looked angry, even sitting down with his right leg stretched out. It looked at least one bullet had managed to hit his leg, and a corresponding bloodstain was working its way down his uniform pants. It wasn't pretty, but taking into account that Diaz was still very much conscious – albeit a little wobbly – it probably hadn't done too much damage. That just left Private John Magee.

"Get some pressure on that wound," Corvus said, then looked over to Pieper. "I need eyes on the bad guys, Pieper."

"Uh, yeah, Lance, on it!" Pieper said.

Corvus unhooked the rear door of the Humvee and climbed inside. The left side of the truck – parked as it was facing the enemy – was a mess of spiderwebbed glass, ruined panels and loosened interior lining. The truck listed to the left, indicating that the tires hadn't gotten off lightly, either. Fortunately, few bullets seemed to have actually penetrated into the cab; just a few interior spiderwebs on the right and a shot-off rearview mirror. John was still lying crumpled up in the middle of the cab, with some blood leaking through a hole in his vest. Corvus grabbed him under his arms and started pulling him free. The gunfire that had filled the air just half a minute ago was gone.

"They're running away, Lance," Pieper said, peering over the hood of the Humvee with his carbine at the ready. "Fuck. I thought we were gonna get our dance cards punched for sure."

"Probably, but they'd have killed you last," Diaz said.

"Are you going to be a cock about me not lying in the dirt next to you? Is that your thing now?"

"Little cover fire from you would've been nice, that's all I'm sayin', _papi_."

"I was just **slightly **busy drawing all the fucking Hajji fire," Pieper replied. "So, I don't know, maybe that 'splains it."

"Need a hand here!" Corvus said. Pieper scanned the horizon for signs of renewed attack, then turned and walked to help Corvus with John's body. Together, they maneuvered him onto the ground as softly as circumstances allowed and stripped his vest off. Pieper set to work on bandaging the chest wound while Corvus bowed over his face and listened. "He's breathing," she said. "Pieper, you got this?"

"Yeah, I got it," Pieper said.

Corvus nodded to him, then fumbled with her radio to switch it to the larger company loop.

"Lynx One, this is Lynx One-Four, come in, over" she said.

The radio crackled to life. "Lynx One-Four, this is Lynx One, how's the desert treating you today? Over."

"We got ambushed at the bridgehead, One, we need a CASEVAC for two and a tow for our truck, over."

The reply came after a few seconds of silence. "Say again, One-Four, you were ambushed? Over."

"Positive, Lynx One, we were ambushed and two of my team members are losing blood, so I say again, we need a CASEVAC. Over."

"Uh, stand by for orders, One-Four. Lynx One out."

"Great," Corvus said after her finger had left the "Send" button. She turned to the battered remains of her team. "While we're waiting for HQ to get in gear - how are we doing, gentlemen?"

"Maggy's stable," Pieper said.

"My leg hurts like a motherfucker," Diaz said. "Thanks for saving my ass, Lance."

"Yeah, no shit," Pieper said. "You were like the Terminatrix or something, all cutting down suckers left and right."

"If you want to compliment me, use a better movie," Corvus replied, not without a smirk.

"Come on, Lance," Diaz said. "Let's not started blaming Jimmy for his horrible taste in everything, we'll be here all day."

"Your ignorant and wrong opinions are noted, but allow me to enlighten you with four words," Pieper said. "Kristanna Loken's sweater kittens."

"I'm familiar with tits, Pieper," Corvus said. "I am a girl under all this badass, you know."

"Yeah, but...uh..."

"This should be good," Corvus murmured. "Go on."

"Well, you're the Lance, Lance. Under better circumstances, I would consider you quite pretty" - Corvus raised an eyebrow - "beautiful?" - the eyebrow rose further - "okay, very wankable."

Corvus sighed. "Better circumstances, Pieper?"

"He can't get it up," Diaz said, "unless you order him to grab his dick and tug it like a good little marine." Using his free hand, Diaz mimed the motion a few times, his efforts going past illustrating straight into cementing the uncomfortable mental image.

"Fuck you," Pieper said. "I don't have to take that from you, Mr. '50 gigs of the sickest shit on this planet'."

"Yeah, but at least that's 50 gigs not starring the Lance. Your wet dreams, though..."

"Jesus, guys," Corvus.

Pieper turned to Corvus, looking as blushed as his sunburnt skin would allow. "Uh, I'm sorry, Lance. Obviously this whole conversation was, like, very inappropriate."

"Sorry, Lance," Diaz added.

"And, uh, it's all just a bad joke anyway," Pieper said. "Right? Except that part about you being – a good-looking woman, that was totally not a lie but I don't think about you that way, please don't hurt me."

"Well, this is awkward," Corvus said, full-on grin on her face. "Now I don't know whether to be flattered or disgusted. And thank God Magee's not hearing any of it."

"Lynx One-Four, do you read, over?" the radio crackled.

"This is Lynx One-Four, go ahead."

"CASEVAC is on the way. One-Six is four klicks out, ETA 10 minutes. I've got a few flyboys with fast movers for you, if you can use them. Over."

"Negative on air support, Lynx One, the enemy is in retreat. Over."

"Copy. Stay safe, One-Four, help is on the way. Oh, and heads up, One-Six Actual is riding, so you better have a sitrep. Lynx One out."

"Copy that, Lynx One. One-Four out."

Corvus redirected her attention from the radio to her team. "Heads up," she said. "Reinforcements in 10."

"You don't sound so happy, Lance," Pieper replied.

"Captain Stack is riding with them," Corvus said. "Expect handshakes, questions and mando fun this weekend."

That brought silence to the team for a few moments, until Pieper found his voice again. "I think I liked it better when the Hajjis were shooting at us."

* * *

><p>Since we figure that this is a fairly dense chapter, this commentary will pretty much just consist of explaining a wide variety of things that appear here. So if you have, say, taken some sort of oath to only read single-topic author's commentary, skip this one. (And maybe think twice about taking silly oaths.)<p>

"AST" is Arabic Standard Time and good throughout all of Iraq. The US military (and most of NATO) work with Zulu time internally, which is another term for UTC (Coordinated Universal Time), which is in turn based on the more historical Greenwich Mean Time. Since local time is more useful on the ground, it's pretty much a hard requirement to know the offset for your area of operations. And since UTC does not have a Daylight Savings Time adjustment (different countries having different rules for that), you also need to know if and when to adjust the offset for that.

We chose the 6th ESB as Sara Corvus's unit because as far as we've been able to ascertain from publicly available information, they actually were operating in Iraq near Fallujah during December 2004. For those of you who don't have all the minutia of the war memorized, this date is just a few days before the beginning of Operation Phantom Fury, where US forces went into the then still-hot Fallujah and cleared the city of insurgents block by block.

"Boot" is Marine Corps slang for an inexperienced Marine, fresh out of Boot Camp. Calling someone a boot implies that they don't know anything about life in the fleet and that their opinions are accordingly worthless. "Hajji" – derived from an Arabic male honorific – has found itself mutated by US soldiers and marines into a common pejorative towards Iraqis, Afghans and anyone else who's vaguely "brown", as well as by extension anything used by them – so you can find Hajji shops, Hajji taxis, Hajji cops. Thanks to a little linguistic phenomenon called the dysphemism treadmill, many service members use the term widely with no specific intent to insult, but it's still far from nice. (And no, the quite worse insult Pieper uses after the sniper gets shot isn't the worst of it by a long shot.)

Figuring out which job Sara Corvus would have done in the military wasn't easy, but in the end we settled on combat engineer. Although this MOS (Military Occupational Specialty) is open to women, the ban on deploying women in combat roles means that only certain units were open to her, specifically units attached to one of the Engineering Support Battalions. Of these, we figured bridge reconnaissance would give her a position independent enough to be to her liking, plus set up the team being on their own against the ambush. The US Air Force's strategic airlift capability notwithstanding, a lot of heavy equipment and supplies are shipped by sea and have to then continue on roads to get where they're needed. Therefore, ensuring that the roads and bridges are in a usable state is a very important job.

A few more words: "DFAC" is a Dining Facility, the preferred nomenclature for what one might more colloquially call a "chow hall". Their popularity with younger enlisted Marines is, shall we say, limited – the food is generally considered to be overly fatty, unhealthy and (worst of all) just not very tasty. The issue has gotten more attention in Iraq because of the unprecedented logistical support the war has gotten, enabling several of the bigger forward operating bases to house multiple fast food chains that are predictably seeing a lot of business. "Oorah!" is a multifunctional call that can substitute for every word in the English language if you're a Marine, **except** for "No". (Do not, under any circumstances, confuse this with the Army's "Hooah!") A "motard" is a rather colorful way to describe someone who is so obsessed with the concept of being motivated or "moto" that it overrides his common sense and/or decency towards his comrades. And an "EPR" is an Enlisted Personnel Report, which is supposed to be written by the service member's superiors and to be used in determining eligibility for promotion and such for non-commisioned officers, i.e. Corporal and above in the Corps – and since the EPR mostly consists of trying to pack one person's achievements into nice-sounding bullet points, Staff and other rear echelon troops who frequently deal with written communication have an advantage here. Not to mention the widespread, if officially completely discouraged, practice of letting service members essentially write their own EPR bullets. As for slideshows…well, it's no accident that the phrase "Death by Powerpoint" is a widespread meme in the services, being that many briefings now make extensive use of such presentations in a (usually failed) attempt to be more accessible.

A few notes on the promotion system the characters bemoan. Lower enlisted Marines are rated according to a point system which takes into account a wide variety of factors, starting with stuff like evaluating how good you are at your actual job to such things as the commendations you got, the results of your physical fitness test and how well you scored on the firing range. (As should surprise absolutely nobody, Sara Corvus routinely shot Expert Marksman in both the rifle and pistol categories.) The planners look at how many marines are at a specific rank in a specific MOS and figure out from there how many they need to promote to get as many people as they want with the right ranks. Based on that, they set a minimum score to be considered for promotion – a high one if they only intend to give out a few promotions, a low one if they want to promote a lot of service members. This is in turn based upon the needs of the Corps and how good retention is within the MOS, that is, whether marines in it tend to renew their contracts ("reup") or whether they get out after their initial service obligation is over. So if your MOS is bleeding people (f'rex, because the job qualifies you for a civilian career that pays better or the job in the military plain sucks – hello, Navy "nukes"!), you'll have to offer retention bonuses (read: cold hard cash, or promises thereof) to entice people to reup and have low cutting scores to promote the ones you do manage to keep. If, on the other hand, people in your MOS tend to stay in the Corps (maybe because the job does not easily translate to a well-paying civilian gig) or your MOS is simply big enough, you can afford to be pickier and have a higher cutting score. In practice, this means that service members in some specialties can be promoted quite quickly while other MOSs have lots of service members who are promoted slowly or never seem to be able to "pick up". To out it mildly, this can cause some resentment.

As for Sara Corvus's specific situation: as Diaz says, she actually does have a score high enough to qualify for promotion (thanks to being a bit of a badass), but of course final say over whether a marine can be promoted rests with his or her superiors, and they've decided to not recommend (non-rec) Corvus. Note that Pieper specifies she's a Lance Corporal "second award", which means she previously held the rank, was demoted and then attained the rank again. This can be done through a so-called NJP (Non-Judicial Punishment), referred to as "office hours" in the Corps, but perhaps better known by its Army term "Article 15" (named after the respective section in the Uniform Code of Military Justice). Essentially, her superiors caught her with a charge that would have seen her go to a court martial, but offered her the NJP of a rank reduction (and probably docked a few months' worth of pay) in lieu. This is frequently done when a service member has clearly broken the UCMJ but her or his superiors do not want to see the matter go through the court system. The service member still has the right to legal counsel and can insist on a court martial, but we'll assume Corvus's JAG advised her to not take the gamble and instead accept the NJP.

Weapons notes: most of the characters are described as using rifles – specifically, the M16A2, which the USMC still favors over the US Army's now-standard, more compact M4 carbine as its main weapon due to a variety of reasons. One is that it's got a greater effective range, reflecting the ethos that "every Marine is a rifleman". Another is that the USMC enjoys rather lesser levels of funding than the Army and therefore does not have the budget to replace all of its existing rifles. However, some M4 carbines are in service with the Marines and you can see PFC Pieper, the team's driver, use one. The insurgents attacking the team are using Kalashnikov-pattern rifles, specifically the AKM, a slightly modernized version of the AK-47. (Most guns you find referred to as AK-47s in the wild are actually AKMs or copies thereof. Functionally pretty much the same weapon, though.) The team also has sidearms, specifically standard-issue Beretta M9 pistols. The Deuce is amply described in the story, though circumstances don't allow it to be used. Since we never see what weapon the sniper uses, we won't tell what it was. Nener nener.

During the fight, the team takes more than a few hits from the enemy rifles without getting themselves killed. It helps here to remember that the 7.62x39mm ammunition used by AKMs is technically an "intermediary" caliber, not a full-power rifle cartridge. (To be fair, so is the 5.56x45mm NATO round.) Further, the US military fields armor that is specifically designed to withstand multiple hits from this caliber, and the heavy ballistic vest with its wide coverage and reinforced strike plate to soak hits to the chest is a far more resilient beast than an undercover cop's Kevlar vest. That said, it's still a very bad idea to stand out in the open when getting shot at. Diaz takes an early hit in his leg, possibly deflected somewhat by the armor's groin protector, but that takes him out of the fight quickly - and from there on, he figures his best chance is to pretend to be helpless so he won't draw more fire, a very dangerous gamble.

400 meters is pretty damn far for a combat engagement and at the upper edge of what is generally considered to be the distance at which you can shoot at a man-sized target with an assault rifle and get hits. However, the M16 does trace its lineage back to what was essentially a target rifle and is still considered quite accurate among assault rifles. A more impressive feat, perhaps, is using the iron sights at this range, but it's not an impossible one. (Gatac wishes to note at this point that while he has hit a man-sized target at that range with an assault rifle chambered in 5.56x45mm NATO, the same caliber as the M16 uses, it was a clearly visible target, the cardboard was considerate enough to have the profile of a standing man, and he was using a scope. And, uh, the first shot wasn't quite dead center, either. Or on the target at all, for that matter. But we digress.)

When discussing Corvus's actions in combat, the characters are, of course, referring to Terminator 3, which was released in 2003, just a year prior the events – enough time for DVDs (or rips thereof) to make their rounds among the marines in their unit. And "flyboys" in "fast movers" would refer to Air Force pilots flying fighter jets that could be called in the drop ordnance on enemy positions. Thanks to steadily improving communication between different branches of the US military, air support can be quickly tasked using whatever assets are closest. Presumably, the unit didn't have any air support of its own – such as an AH-1 Cobra helicopter gunship, which constitutes most of the Corps' airborne firepower – available at the time, or maybe the Air Force jets simply would have gotten there faster.

Mandatory fun is any activity ostensibly designed for the recreation and enjoyment of the servicemembers involved. Whatever possible actual fun it might contain is, of course, utterly crushed by being quite impossible to escape and thereby ruining the servicemembers' real weekend plans. (Which, we feel safe to generalize, usually involve more alcohol and less awkward conversation with one's superior officers.)

Oh, and that bridge? It's in Google Earth, go see if you can find it.


	2. Chapter 2

Hey guys, the main story's taking a bit longer than usual to get done, so we're releasing this early to tide you over. You should be read up to Big Sister Chapter 7. Oh, and richierich - we really love your loyal reviews! Keep 'em coming!

* * *

><p>December 15th 2004, 1530 AST (Zulu + 0300)<p>

Camp Baharia near Fallujah, Al Anbar Governate, Iraq

6th Engineer Support Battalion, USMC

* * *

><p>Five days after the ambush, Lance Corporal Sara Corvus was functioning. She had done her damndest to keep it together since the ambush, and mostly succeeded. Yes, there were guilty feelings, but they were surprisingly mild and didn't stack up against the – she didn't have an exact word for it, but it was a good feeling. She had saved lives. She had kept it together. She had won. And as far as she was concerned, that had been the easy part, now she had to live it. And that meant going out there again, her mind constantly locked on the next firefight. It didn't help that she was riding with marines she didn't know. Outside the wire, she was vigilant – in a good way, she thought – and quiet. Nobody dared to talk to her more than strictly necessary. It was a bewildering mixture of awe and distance, and Corvus wished dearly for things to get back to normal. Finally getting to talk to her CO one on one would help, she hoped.<p>

Captain Richard Stack had his office in a small side building to the main admin complex, which suited him and the rest of the unit just fine – it shortened the gauntlet of brass one might encounter on the way to him, and Corvus got away with only three respectful greetings to passing officers before reaching the Captain's door. A small white-on-black sign next to it read "CPT R STACK". Corvus took a breath and knocked.

"Come in!" Captain Stack called from inside. Corvus opened the door and stepped into the office, then stood at attention. Stack's office had the peculiar trait of being a quite narrow room with half-covered plywood walls, presenting a passage between two rows of file cabinets leading up to Stack's desk. The desk wasn't anything to write home about, either, only holding up some paperwork and a small picture of his family. Behind that sat Captain Stack, with a window behind him in turn, and that was the entirety of the room. Still, Stack immediately pushed off his chair and stood up straight to greet her.

"Sir, Lance Corporal Sara Corvus reporting as ordered, Sir."

"At ease, Corporal," he called out.

Corvus's right hand joined her left one behind her back, and she stepped her left foot a bit to the side, ending with her feet about a shoulder's width apart. Her back stayed straight. Captain Stack was one of those young Marine Corps officers you could have pulled right out of a recruiting commercial – tall and lean, immaculate uniform, and a high and tight that couldn't be older than two, three days at the most. He sat back down; Corvus noted that there was no room for a chair in front of his desk, not that he would have invited her to sit.

"Corporal Corvus, I have excellent news for you," Stack said, and his smile was utterly genuine. "I've gone over the reports from your team and have put in a commendation for you with the chain. I can't make any promises, of course, but if the Colonel agrees, you might already be wearing a Bronze Star by this time next week. That was fantastic work, Corporal, and I am **very** pleased."

"Thank you, Sir."

"This is especially important for you, Corporal. I don't think it's out of place to say that you have encountered difficulties in this deployment. I know you're frustrated, and Staff Sergeant Kwan told me you turned down reenlistment the last time the topic came up."

"That is correct, Sir."

"Well, I hope you reconsider that now, Corporal." Stack folded his hands and leaned his elbows on the desk. "The Corps takes care of its marines, but you have to get active. Take the opportunity to rethink your approach, Corporal. Chaplain Moore is a good man and he's helped many of my marines deal with the pressures of the job. Look at what you're doing here, Corporal. You clearly care about keeping yourself in shape, about leading your team and doing your job well. Kwan is willing to give you another go, but **you** have to want it. Think about it, Corporal – keep your nose clean, keep your score up and use the resources you have, and it doesn't take a crystal ball to know you'll get your pick-up next cycle. You're not the first marine with a drinking problem and with a little willpower you will be one of many marines who turned it around." He paused for breath. Corvus waited to see if his lecture would veer onto a topic she hadn't already covered with Staff Sergeant Kwan a few times. "Oh, and Private Magee's surgery went well. It looks like he'll spend another month in the hospital in Germany before we send him back home. I thought you should know."

"Thank you, Sir," Corvus said, and waited some more.

"That will be all, Corporal. Dismissed."

Corvus nodded, then turned on her heel and marched out of the office. _Figures_, Corvus thought. _**Now**__ they want to keep __you__. __You win one firefight and suddenly you're hot shit. You __**know**__ that can't last, give that a week and nobody will give a shit. You'll go straight back to dirtbag country, Sara. Turn it around? Oh please, like that could happen. You're here and that won't change. So, what are you looking at? I'll tell you what: You're looking at four more years of being their __**bitch**__. And you're doing it for what, more clueless pep talks like that? Every sex-starved dick in theater trying to make you their desert queen with a fifth of Military Special? A fucking __**retention bonus**__? Fuck __**that**__ noise._

* * *

><p>She caught a ride with a supply truck over to the neighboring Camp Fallujah, a somewhat larger complex that housed the nearest field hospital. It was a small facility, dedicated to taking care of the immediate needs of the soldiers without any cumbersome or expensive equipment for specialized treatments. Two large stone blocks rested in front of the entrance, painted with the Red Cross and the Red Crescent, respectively, to mark the building as a medical facility both to soldiers, American and otherwise, as well as in the eyes of the Geneva Convention. Corvus couldn't help but wonder if international conventions were capable of redirecting mortar shells.<p>

She had long ago been divorced from the fantasy that a military hospital would, necessarily, be filled only with people who had been shot, blown up or stabbed, who would be cared for with professional tenderness by nurses in prim white uniforms and little peaked caps. Instead, the hospital usually split its attention between various types of sports injuries, with the occasional (officially inexplicable) VD thrown in. That wasn't to say that good old gunshot wounds never came in, but it hardly looked like your typical M.A.S.H. episode. Most of the beds were empty, actually, and a few Navy corpsmen seemed to be shooting the breeze in the backroom while one kept up the rounds between the few patients. It didn't take a lot of searching to find Diaz in his bed, where he somehow managed to balance his laptop on his "good" leg away from the wound. The blanket was shoved to the end of his bed – clearly too hot during the day – and a pair of headphones pressed down on his no longer **quite** regulation length haircut.

"Oh, Lance!" Diaz exclaimed when he saw her approach. He ripped the headphones from his ears and closed the laptop. "I wasn't expecting you."

"I'm sure you have plenty of women keeping you company," Corvus said, nodding towards the laptop. "How are you doing?"

"Oh, it's been another fine Marine Corps day. I can't get up to piss, and rides to the Internet café are right out. Never been away from civilization this long." Diaz paused. "Hey, Lance, would you call my Mom? Tell her I'm okay?"

"Sure," Corvus said. "So, how long are they planning to keep you here?"

"The squids say it'll be another week before they can let me walk," Diaz said. "You better believe I'm getting the fuck out of here once they'll let me. But I'm on profile until further notice, so you'll have to find someone else to ride with you."

"I have to do that anyway," Corvus said. "They flew Magee out to Germany. He'll go home when he's healed up."

"Shit, I wondered what happened to the boot," Diaz said, a thoughtful look on his face. "And Jimmy?"

"Riding with Caplan's boys for the moment," Corvus said. "I haven't gotten around to talking to him yet."

"You've had five days, Lance," Diaz chided. "What's going on with you? Come on, lay it on me. You saved my ass, the least I can do is listen to you whine."

"You're a dick, Diaz," Corvus said with a smile.

"Well, I **did** deflect a bullet with my cock…"

Corvus gathered her thoughts. "Okay, so, what's going on with me? I don't know. I guess that after you get shit on enough, you become allergic to praise. I just talked to Captain Stack. He wants to give me a Bronze Star, and I don't even know how to process that. He told me I should reup, too, that this is my second chance."

"Bronze?" Diaz asked. "Wow, they're fucking you over even when they give you a medal. With Kwan in your place, they would've pushed for Silver, I guaran-fucking-tee it."

"I don't care about hypothetical blowjobs," Corvus replied, a little anger in her voice. "I didn't ask for a medal to begin with. Bronze, silver, whatever. It doesn't matter. I'm terminal in two months and I'm way beyond giving a fuck about politics."

"Damn, listen to yourself, Lance," Diaz said and put a grin on his face. "What will you do after the Corps, then?"

"I'm not sure yet," Corvus admitted. "Why, do you have a suggestion?"

"I'll do you one better, I've got a game plan for you."

"Do you now?" Corvus asked.

"I have a lot of time to think about shit here. Shut up." Diaz took a breath. "You take that medal with a smile and a 'Yes Sir!'. Then you lie low for a few more weeks, relax your shit during terminal leave and walk out as a war hero with an Honorable. You find yourself a cheap community college, just to knock out the low-level bullshit, before you hit up a real college and wave your sweet, sweet GI Bill cash around. That plus BAH and you treat yourself to three years of livin' la vida loca" – Corvus rolled her eyes, but smiled – "and then, you get into architecture or whatever it is you want to do with your life now that you've fulfilled your asskicking quota."

"That's not half bad," Corvus admitted. "What are you going to do when I'm out?"

"Well, I wasn't quite done planning for **that**, but I think I'm gonna cry myself to sleep every night and seek the carnal comfort of every halfway decent _chica_," Diaz said. "And do my best to dodge the mean green weenie."

"And that's different from now, how?"

"You won't be there to give me shit about it," Diaz said. Corvus smiled again.

* * *

><p>Her business in Camp Fallujah concluded, Corvus set out for the march to the camp's motor pool. Moving across the camp in full battle rattle wasn't the most comfortable experience, but at least the time was right for it – no more noon heat, but no evening cold yet, just a nice sweltering warmth that squeezed the sweat out of her. The motor pool was, essentially, a parking lot, with some tent roofs put up for shade to give the mechanics a place to work; a medium-sized garage provided the luxuries of complete shadow and air conditioning, but was strictly reserved to work on vehicles that needed labor-intensive repairs. With the day almost done and the assembled trucks in good working order, she found a few marines hanging out in the shadow of a supply truck, involved in a good-hearted session of bullshitting with energy drinks all around. Her approaching footsteps led to rapid silence and craned necks, the way a herd of gazelles might react to signs of a lion nearby.<p>

"Afternoon, gentlemen," Corvus said.

"Oorah, Corporal," one of the marines said. Corvus would have bet a fiver that none of the small group were older than 20. "What do you need?"

"A ride to Baharia. Do you have something for me?"

"We're running a shuttle at 1800 on the dot, Corporal."

"I see," Corvus said. "And if I want to leave now?"

The private processed that for a moment. "You didn't hear that from me, Corporal, but Staff Sergeant Soto's afternoon patrol is leaving in ten." The private pointed her to the other end of the pool, where a group of marines in full gear were busy loading up a convoy of three Humvees. "He might let you hitch a ride and drop you off at the gate, if you're alright with a little downtown safari."

"That's fine by me, Private. Thank you."

"Stay safe, Corporal."

Corvus approached the patrol with some trepidation; asking favors of NCOs she didn't know was always a bit of a gamble, and certainly came with the risk of having her head torn off. The quiet that spread over the marines when they saw her made her think that this risk was becoming more actual with every step she took, but she had made her choice.

"I'm looking for Staff Sergeant Soto," she announced.

One marine was climbing around on the lead truck checking its aerials; he replied without turning around. "Right here, marine," he said. "What can I do you for?"

_Sounds friendly enough_, Corvus thought. "Staff Sergeant, I need to get to Camp Baharia. I heard your patrol might be going that way."

"You must'a heard wrong," Soto said. Corvus kept quiet for a second. "We're goin' downtown. But hell, we can drop you off at Dreamland on the way back. You can ride in the lead truck with me. That all fine and dandy with you, marine?"

"Yes, Staff Sergeant. Thank you."

"Glad to hear it. Now mount up."

* * *

><p>On the ride into Fallujah, Staff Sergeant Soto proved to be rather gregarious. He told Corvus all about how his grandparents had immigrated from Japan in the 1930s and settled in Texas, admitted to being a bit of a hellraiser in his youth before the Corps "set him straight" and joked that a lot of people were thrown off balance by the combination of his Asian-American features and his Southern drawl, to which Corvus found herself forced to agree. Still, her eyes were on the streets.<p>

Insofar as a besieged city in a war-torn country had commercial nodes, they were passing through one. The street they were driving on was wide, with four generous lanes. Granted, the two outer ones were blocked by the masses of parked cars, most of them apparently imported in the 1980s. Adjacent to that street on both sides was yet more space, mostly empty sidewalks with the occasional (yet fully utilized) bike stands. And to the side of that were the buildings, rows of low-built shops with dulled advertisements. The large lettering was in Arabic, accompanied by hand-drawn illustrations; some shops had added smaller English signs, which were rather less fanciful. It reminded Corvus of something like a half-deserted Western movie set without the upbeat piano soundtrack. In the distance, the taller buildings of the more urban city core loomed, interspersed with a plethora of minarets. Corvus wondered what the city would look like if it was completely lit up at night, but at the moment, there simply wasn't enough power to go around and keep the city supplied reliably.

Still, there was movement in the streets. Driving past a dusty courtyard, Corvus caught sight of some children playing soccer – or rather, kicking the ball from one kid to the next. Corvus could hear Soto laugh and say something about starting a league, but her eyes were on the ball. It was dusty, but seemed new, and maybe it was a present from a soldier or marine who had passed through here. But Corvus wasn't thinking about whether the children appreciated where the ball came from. No, her thought process was on a lower level: was this fast-moving thing a threat?

"You look a little shook up, marine," Soto said.

"I'm fine," Corvus muttered. "I'm okay, Staff Sergeant. I'm just keeping an eye out."

Soto chuckled. "You and ev'ryone else."

"Roadblock ahead, Sarge," the driver announced.

"Ah, jinxed it," Soto said and climbed forward. A car was parked perpendicular to the flow of traffic a few intersections ahead, blocking the street. Corvus craned her neck to get a glimpse – the car looked empty.

"That's an ambush," she said. Her mind cleared and sharpened, and the hairs at the back of her neck stood up as her body prepared for combat once again.

"Darn straight it is," Soto said. "Flex, keep 'er rolling and take the next right."

"Gotcha, Sarge."

"You wanna keep yer eyes peeled?" Soto said to Corvus. "Watch the roofs."

The convoy turned right into the next street, a much narrower affair. Corvus could feel everyone in the Humvee tense up around her. Gunmen jumping out of house entrances? RPG gunners on the rooftops? Cars roaring into position front and back to box them in? She could see every one of those things happen, but she was ready, and so were the marines around her.

None of them suspected the low, damp cardboard box on the road. The explosive charge hidden within the box went off when the first Humvee rolled on top of it. The trucks behind it could only slam on the brakes when the lead patrol vehicle was pierced by a lance of fire from beneath.

* * *

><p>At Camp Fallujah's bar, things were quiet. The building was almost entirely deserted, save for two men sitting at the bar nursing their cool beers. One looked like he belonged; a dark-skinned man that filled out his US Army uniform nicely. The mug in his hand looked as right as the pistol on his hip. The other man was young and pale, his bright eyes hidden behind thin frames and bangs of dark hair. The laminated badge dangling from the breast pocket of his prim white shirt read "Dr. William Anthros".<p>

Will looked up from his beer, as if he'd just had a profound thought – which tended to happen quite a bit with him. "Can I ask you something, Major Pope?" he said.

"Go ahead," the soldier – Antonio Pope – said.

"What is your opinion on military language?"

"I'm not sure I understand what you're getting at."

"Well," Will began, gesticulating as if acting out some fantasy in his head. "Assume, as an example, a conversation via radio. It doesn't sound anything like what two normal people talking on the phone are like. So I suppose my question is, does that feel natural to you by now, or do you still feel a sort of disquiet whenever you say 'Over and out'?"

"I wouldn't say 'Over and out' to begin with. You pick one of the two."

"Oh, yes, right," Will said. "Because if you say 'over', you expect a reply, is that correct?"

"Exactly," Pope replied.

Will waved his index finger in a half-gesture. "See, I can't think of a similar construct in everyday language that is used so rigidly. We do not regularly end our sentences with constructions that demand the other party respond. We simply stop talking and give someone else the chance to speak, and if no reply comes, we assume the conversation is simply over. I think this is something inherent in our spoken communication, that we leave spaces for other people to interact with us. In the same way, have you noticed that people introduce unintentional ambiguity into their statements when they talk in a way they would not do in written communication? Because talking to someone is a social interaction, and ambiguity helps us mediate a conversation between people of different opinions. People tend towards trying to make pleasant conversation. You would find the same choice of phrases to be overly imprecise and uncommitted if you read it, but on the other hand, people who talk in absolutes and clear statements come across as blunt and quite rude because they directly confront people with their own views." He paused and looked at Pope.

"Go on," Pope said, focused on his beer.

"The contrast with military language is quite blatant, then, Major, in that military language tends to exactly that blunt nature. Clearly, ambiguity is an undesirable trait if you want to communicate orders and vital information, so to me – admittedly, a civilian with no military experience – it sounds harsh, but I imagine to a seasoned soldier such as you, the perception of that direct military language must be quite more favorable. In a way, military language, in its purest form, really isn't so much English as it loans English words to construct a sharply reduced yet no less valid language with rigid structural norms. I mean, if you approach this radio command language with a _tabula rasa_, 'over' or 'out' really have no intrinsic meaning from their English origin that would let you deduce what they mean in a military context. They're just signals learned by rote. You could replace them with anything and it would still work."

"I suppose."

"And that takes us back to my question, Major Pope, how do you feel about military language vis a vis everyday spoken English?"

"I prefer it," Pope replied.

"I see," Will said. "If you don't mind, Major, I'd like to ask you a somewhat more personal question now."

"That depends on the question," Pope said. "Ask and we'll see."

"Yes, I suppose that's a fair point," Will said. "Major, what do you think of my father?"

"Anthony Anthros is a brilliant man," Pope replied, as if reading from a hypothetical Berkut PR brochure.

"And – you know, personally? I mean, how do you feel about him?"

"I have no personal feelings," Pope said. "He's in charge. If I get orders from him, I execute them to the best of my ability."

"I think I really need to apologize for this in advance, but – isn't that making it a little too simple for yourself? I mean, that way you'd never have a nuanced opinion of – well, anyone."

"Nuanced opinions are not necessary for what I do." Pope finished his beer. "I do my job well, I do not want for anything material and I feel no need to complicate my life with personal feelings. Do your feelings toward your father make your job harder or easier, Dr. Anthros?"

Will thought about that for a second, then grimaced as he realized he really didn't want to answer the question. "I try to keep my feelings toward my father away from my work."

"And that is the entirety of my philosophy, Doctor," Pope said, seeming just a little pleased with himself. "Our work requires detachment and clarity. If I can live better without distractions, why would I miss them?"

"I see your point, but –"

Will's improvised lecture didn't get to continue, as a beeping sound issued from his briefcase. He reached down and propped it open, revealing a ruggedized laptop within. The screen was flashing a brilliant warning box, no doubt Nathan Ambrose's idea of subtle.

"Somebody just pulled a candidate medical record," Will said, interpreting the warning sign for Pope, who in turn hadn't bothered to look in anticipation of Will doing just that. "From the trauma center here."

"Which candidate?" Pope asked.

"Lance Corporal Corvus," Will said. "Wasn't she the Bronze Star one?"

"Yep," Pope said. "Can you tell how serious it is?"

"The computer shows a priority CASEVAC and they're pulling blood inventories," Will said. "This is **very** serious."

"Then we'll take her," Pope said. "I'll make the necessary arrangements."

* * *

><p>To put it mildly, neither the Navy corpsmen nor the staff doctor at the military hospital knew what exactly to make of Will rolling up with a mess of medical gear and telling them that he was taking over. On the other hand, the written authorization he waved around was just vague enough that it amounted to a medical letter of marque, and having it signed by the Assistant Secretary of Defense created the quite justified impression that this was more than a few paygrades above anyone at the hospital. With the distinctive whap-whap of the medical UH-1N Twin Huey on approach, nobody felt particularly motivated to argue the finer points of this incident; all that mattered was that there was another medical professional at hand, and he was offering his skills and supplies to help. They could sort out the paperwork after the patients were stable.<p>

The Huey touched down on the empty road in front of the hospital, kicking off a miniature sandstorm in the process; Will ignored the grains of sand beating against his face as he and the corpsmen stood by, waiting for the pilot to throttle down and give them a sign. The cabin doors on the helicopter opened in anticipation of that same clearance; after three eternities, it was finally safe to approach, and Will's dashing speed revealed solid intent to make up for the wait. He saw that the helicopter crewmen were looking to unload two stretchers and a few marines who were still on their feet, but it wasn't difficult to identify Corvus – he simply took possession of the biggest bloody mess. With one of the crew and two corpsmen by his side, he started wrangling the stretcher towards the hospital.

"Lance Corporal Corvus," the crewman rattled off, "massive impact trauma, shrapnel, burns, you name it. Lost a lot of blood, we pushed two volume expanders and one milligram epi, pulse is 40 at strength 1, airway is secure, we stopped the bleeding from limbs and external wounds."

"Internal bleeding?" Will asked.

"Severe!" the crewman confirmed. "God's honest, Doc, she's a fighter, but…"

"Leave it to me," Will replied. "Good work, soldier, we've got it from here."

There was no time for further discussion. The corpsmen pulled Corvus into the operating theater; Will scrubbed in quickly, then pulled on a pair of surgical gloves and took stock of the situation. The woman on the stretcher was critically injured, that much was obvious. Her face was a bloody mess, and even the neck brace that had been fitted to her prior to her helicopter ride was already covered in splotches of blood. Dark bruises covered most of her torso – while the mess of bandages had stopped the bleeding on the surface, there were blood pools forming in her belly. Her right leg was a bloody sack of meat and crushed bones; of her left leg, only a stump remained. Similarly, her left arm was entirely missing below the elbow, while her right arm sat twisted and broken, with blue bruises visible through the torn remains of her uniform sleeve. In a fitting display of desperation, all four limbs were fitted with emergency tourniquets. Will glimpsed times written on those limbs with black marker, a record of when the tourniquets had been applied, but he didn't care to read them – he had already decided that there was nothing left of her arms or legs that was worth saving. He felt for a pulse on her neck and could barely find it. Will didn't have any time to waste.

"I need a large-bore IV away from the limbs," Will said, laying out several packs of a milky white liquid, "and one CC of epinephrine." He swabbed Corvus's belly with disinfectant; after applying a generous helping, he flashed a scalpel and started cutting. "Clamps!"

A few minutes ago, this was a person; now, it was just a slab of meat and offal that Will was quite busy working over, peeling back layers of flesh to reach wounded arteries and force them shut with small metal clamps.

"IV secure! Pushing epi now!"

"Keep her ventilated!" Will called, still absorbed in the surgery. "Start her on these, as much as she'll take!"

One of the corpsmen picked up the first packet of white fluid and threw a lost glance at another medic, but in a pinch, they all followed orders, and this was no different. He attached the bag of milky fluid to the IV line and opened the valve to full. The liquid sped down the translucent tube and into Corvus's shoulder artery. A few critical minutes passed while Will worked; it was only when he was almost through with his search for sources of internal bleeding that he tuned the steady announcements of the corpsmen back in.

"Pulse is 60 and rising, strength 2."

"Bleeding is under control," Will said as he clamped the last leaky artery he could find. That wasn't to say that nothing at all was bleeding anymore, but he was quite sure that with the infusion going, she wouldn't bleed out in the near future. "Okay, great work everyone, let's get her back to the chopper."

"What? We just stabilized her!" one corpsman protested.

"No, we only bought some time," Will said. "I don't have the microsurgery equipment here to fully stop the internal bleeding. She needs to get to the hospital in Baghdad as quickly as possible."

"Okay," the medic said. "Okay, you heard the Doc, let's move it, people!"

It was only when they wheeled her back to the waiting helicopter that Will noticed Pope again; the soldier had stood by outside the operation room to safeguard him, but the way he moved now, it seemed like his arrangements had come through. Sometimes, Will thought, it was quite handy to have somebody around to back you up.

* * *

><p>"Fallujah Tower, this is CASEVAC Songbird Zero Five requesting priority corridor to Baghdad International, over."<p>

"Roger, Songbird, what's your status, over?"

"We're transporting a medical team and one casualty, Fallujah Tower, it's a bad one, over."

"Songbird Zero Five, you are cleared for priority corridor to Baghdad International. Landing clearance is in progress, we'll keep you advised. Stand by for handover to Baghdad Tower, over."

"Thank you, Fallujah Tower, CASEVAC Songbird Zero Five is in transit, out."

"Good luck and Godspeed, Songbird. Fallujah Tower out."

* * *

><p>From the helicopter, Will watched Camp Baharia shrink beneath them. Corvus was secured on her stretcher, with the second bag of milky fluid dangling above her. Pope sat in the row of seats opposite Will and regarded the prodigy surgeon with a skeptical look.<p>

"It looks like they're managing the rest of the rescue operation by themselves," Will said. "Did you get a good look at the other casualties, Major Pope?"

"They'll live," Pope replied. He unhooked his seat belts and headset, then climbed over next to Will and indicated for him to take off his headset, too. The noise inside the helicopter was not quite instantly deafening, but it did neatly illustrate why wearing headsets inside was pretty much a must.

"Will she make it?" Pope asked.

"We stopped the bleeding, her heart is beating and she's got all the oxygen she'll need from the Ichor!" Will shouted back. "It's hard to tell how much Ichor she'll use up from internal bleeding, but I estimate we can keep her going for a day! That should be enough to get her home, right?"

"I've made the arrangements. Did you test her?"

"My lab is running a fresh sample now!" Will said, patting one of his bags. "But unless she suddenly expressed a genetic disease since the September blood sample, she should be viable!"

"Alright. I'm trusting your call, Dr. Anthros. We'll have exfil standing by when we touch down."

Pope climbed back to his seat and pushed his headset back on, then keyed the microphone to the pilot's cabin.

"Lieutenant Sims, Lieutenant Uzumeri," he said. "I'm about to give you a set of orders. You will execute those orders without question, and then you will forget I ever gave them to you. Do you both understand this?"

"Yes Sir."

"…yes, Sir."

"Good. Cease all ground comms. You are now transporting a corpse. I will update you on our heading in three minutes."

* * *

><p>One of the "benefits" of operating in a former military dictatorship with a still shaky US ground presence was the presence of a small airfield west of Baghdad, and the complete and utter emptiness of the same – save for a dark grey Gulfstream jet, parked on the runway and primed for takeoff. The helicopter set down almost next to the jet, and within seconds, the side doors opened. The helicopter pilots noted that several men ran to help the doctor with the patient – and they were all dressed in black, with balaclavas hiding their faces.<p>

"Lieutenant Sims, I need you outside," Pope said. The pilot reluctantly unhooked himself and climbed out of the cockpit. He could see the men and the doctor load the patient into the Gulfstream, but his eyes were on Pope, who somehow evoked the feeling of blocking Sims's way while standing in the one direction Sims really didn't want to go.

"…Sir?" Sims asked, as quietly as he could over the roar of the helicopter's engines spinning down.

"The patient didn't make it," Pope began. "You suffered an avionics failure on the flight, so you set down here to check your systems. You have done so. You can now ferry the body, Major Pope and Dr. Anthros to Baghdad International, where they will deliver the body to the hospital morgue."

Before Sims could wonder how this secret agent man intended for that to happen, he saw more people climbing out of the Gulfstream. One was a black man in uniform, another Caucasian in Anthros's business casual. With the help of the masked men, they carried a black body bag toward the helicopter and began loading it. Sims briefly wondered about a million things: how all of that had been arranged during the short flight, where the body came from and how they were going to match the injuries. But with one short look at the masked men, he decided that he really didn't want to find out.

"Do you have any questions, Lieutenant?" Pope said, drawing Sims's attention back to him.

"No, Sir," Sims said.

"Good. Make sure Lieutenant Uzumeri receives the same information. Your country thanks you for your service and your discretion in this matter, Lieutenant Sims."

Sims nodded and walked back to the helicopter, a little stunned by the last few minutes. He climbed back into the cockpit, strapped in and sat there for a moment, saying nothing. One look him and Uzumeri sealed the decision not to do anything that might get them a starring role in Extraordinary Rendition: The Musical.

"Are you going to tell anyone what you saw, Uzi?" Sims asked.

"I didn't see nothing, man," Uzumeri replied. "Nothing at all."

"Yeah. Yeah, me neither."

* * *

><p>Will breathed a long sigh of relief when they were all aboard the Gulfstream. Although he and Pope had gotten to Iraq on a military transport with quasi-official backing of the government, Colonel Bledsoe had insisted on keeping an escape vehicle with a tactical team and doubles on standby, just in case. Much as Will couldn't stand the old bastard, he had to admit that his penchant for overpreparation came in handy in times like this. Will hoped – with a slight grin – that Bledsoe's plans would cope with a lot blood on the deep blue carpet. Maneuvering the woman on the stretcher through the confines of the cabin was a bit of a tricky task, but the Berkut soldiers were up to the challenge of passing the patient past the rows of plush leather seats. The conference room in the back wasn't an ideal operating theater, but it would have to do. He stripped off his bloodied gloves and dumped them in the next trash receptacle, then thoughtfully slapped a little biohazard sticker on it.<p>

"Make sure you strap her to the table," Will said, "we have to keep her as still as possible for the flight."

"Can she even fly like that?" one of the men asked. "When the cabin pressure drops, it'll fuck her up good." Will recognized Lieutenant Maik Jordan's voice even from underneath the mask. As a former Navy EOD specialist, Jordan's expertise was usually called for when it came to deciding whether or not something should explode, but in this case, his diving knowledge let him make a good point. Will hadn't considered the effects of cabin pressure on his patient.

"She'll be fine," Will insisted. "The Ichor will take care of it."

"It is good stuff," Jordan said. "Not worth an arm and a leg, but good stuff."

"We're talking about an **improvement** here," Will replied, sounding more than a little weary of having to go over the topic again in every conversation about his work. "I understand your attachment to your natural limbs, Lieutenant – if you'll forgive the wordplay – but very soon we will live in a world where the limitations of our bodies are no longer romanticized, but instead recognized for the arbitrary result of evolution they are." He looked at the woman. "And that aside, she hardly has anything to lose at this point. Now excuse me, I need to prepare for surgery."

"Um, Doctor...we're about to take off, you know that, yes?" Jordan asked.

"I will wait until we have entered a stable flight condition, of course," Will replied. "But I can't keep her arteries clamped forever. The Ichor is keeping her alive right now, but all we've gained so far is a grace period to repair the damage."

"And her arms and legs?" Jordan asked.

Will shook his head. "Even if I wanted to operate on them in flight, it wouldn't do her any good." He looked at Jordan. "Without us, she would already be dead. We're doing more than just saving her life, Lieutenant Jordan, we're giving her another chance, with every possible advantage."

"I understand that, Doctor, it's just – I'm not sure I believe that."

"You will," the young surgeon said.

At the pilot's insistence, everybody filed to their seats and strapped in for the launch. Will was leaning back in his chair with his eyes closed and his ears focused on the whine of the jet engines when the phone in the arm rest of his seat started ringing. The display read "PROF ANTHROS". Will counted down to three rings before he grabbed the phone and took the call.

"Yes, Sir?" he said.

"William!" the older voice on the other end said. "You've given us all quite the exciting day, son."

"We're all safe, Sir," Will said. "And I'm bringing with me a candidate for Tin Man."

"So I've heard!" Professor Anthros replied. "Quick thinking, and ahead of our schedule, too! I'm having the laboratory prepared as we speak, son, although Major Pope was rather vague in what procedures exactly you expect to perform."

Will rattled off a quick list. "Preliminary suggests full limb replacement, substantial skeletal replacement and reinforcement, full endocrinal replacement, full gastrointestinal replacement, bilateral eye replacement, nanocolonization...stop me if you've heard enough, father, we really have our work cut out for us."

"And yet, a better test subject we could not have asked for. This is your hour to shine, son. The first full human augmentation – by your hands. The culmination of our lifes' work, William. I cannot **wait** to see the look on the faces of the Washington beancounters when we present them with the first of a new breed of soldier. The parts will be ready for you when you arrive."

"Yes," Will replied, "I just hope we can keep her stable for the flight."

"Yes, her," Professor Anthros's voice skipped through a more skeptical timbre. "Well, we've had that discussion before and did end up with a few women on the list," he continued. "Now I admit to certain expectations, but this is an opportunity to subvert them, I suppose. So! Tell me if you need anything further to keep her alive, son, and I will make the necessary arrangements." Before Will could speak, Professor Anthros continued. "Oh, one more thing, William – Colonel Bledsoe has inquired about the events. He wishes to start the cover-up as soon as possible, to get on top of things before anyone has a chance to investigate. He'll require your cooperation, so if you would just speak to him as soon as you're able, that would let us tie up this affair quite neatly!"

"I will call him right away, Sir," Will said. "I'm looking forward to coming home."

"So am I, my son, so am I. Until tomorrow, William."

Will hung up the call and leaned back. After ten seconds, or ten minutes – Will wasn't keeping track at this point – he reached into his pants pocket and extracted a bloodied pair of dog tags wrapped in a spare surgical glove.

"Corvus," he said, reading them aloud to himself. "Sara Corvus."

* * *

><p><em>Commentary: Blood, blood, gallons of the stuff<em>

Let's talk about the red stuff.

Although the human body can in time regenerate lost blood, the immediate consequences of blood loss are severe. Being down a pint of blood can easily lead to dizziness and tightening vision all the way up to fainting if you're of weaker constitution (like Gatac), and that's just a tenth of a healthy adult's blood supply. Lose more blood and you're entering the realm of hypovolemia and the associated hypovolemic shock states. Shock is our body's attempt to preserve itself by shutting down less vital functions and trying to keep the core organs and brain supplied, but even that at best buys you some time to get treated and comes with dangers of its own – it's not for nothing that one of the most important aspects of triage is to determine if someone's in shock and prioritize treatment accordingly. Generally speaking, it's possible to survive losing up to 40% of your total blood volume (about four pints), but further blood loss finally leads to circulatory collapse as the heart is unable to keep pumping blood, at which stage death is imminent.

One obvious way to treat blood loss is to replace the lost blood. Although this method is not a new one, it was only relatively recently that it has come to be viable, due to several reasons. Successful blood transfusions require knowledge of antigen reactions – colloquially "blood types" – and a method to reliably test the patient for the presence of those antigens to determine blood type, while keeping a large amount of transfusable blood in storage requires advancements both in cold storage and separating fresh blood into usable products. All of this only really came together in the second half of the 20th century, and we're still looking for alternatives – but more on that later.

Blood types are a method of categorizing antigens found on red blood cells and to thereby determine compatibility between blood donor and recipient. Simply put, incompatible antigens found on the red blood cells in donor blood can trigger an immune reaction in the recipient with the attendant health complications. The most widely known (and most important for transfusion success) are the "AB0" system and the Rhesus factor, but there are dozens of other blood type systems. Those lesser-known antigens can, in rare cases, lead to incompatibilities, but a combination of "AB0" and Rhesus has proven to cover most potential problems encountered with blood transfusions. In the "AB0" system, people can have antigen type A, antigen type B, both of them (blood type AB) or neither (type 0). From this, we can see that type A and type B blood is incompatible with each other, while AB and 0 are more interesting cases. AB contains both antigens and can therefore receive blood of any type, while 0 – containing neither antigen – can be given to all four blood types without triggering an immune reaction. For this reason, type 0 blood donors are often labeled "universal donors", particularly so if combined with being Rhesus negative (see explanation below). So why not stock up on type 0 negative blood and use that to treat everyone? Two reasons: one, type 0 negative is the rarest blood type and supply of blood donations of this type is correspondingly low. Two, type 0 patients will react to both type A and type B antigens, so they can only receive type 0 blood without complications. Therefore, most hospitals make it a policy to reserve type 0 blood for their use.

Rhesus factor actually covers a small group of antigens, of which the "D" type is the most important – its presence leads to the label "Rhesus positive". The majority of people (roughly 80%, depending on which country you look at) are Rhesus positive, but Rhesus positive blood can lead to severe health consequences when given to people who are Rhesus negative – about 65% of Rhesus negative patients receiving positive blood will develop an antibody reaction. Where such a transfusion is considered despite this, the patient must first be tested for the presence of antibodies that indicate a prior immune reaction, in which case the transfusion cannot be done; even if no prior antibodies exist and the transfusion works, patients must still receive follow-up serology tests. Because of this health risk, children and pregnant women are prioritized when determining who receives Rhesus negative blood. There are no complications with Rhesus negative donor blood being given to Rhesus positive patients, but this is usually avoided due to the relative scarcity of Rhesus negative blood – much like the type 0 situation, this blood must be reserved for treating people who are Rhesus negative or where the presence or absence of the Rhesus factor is unknown. (In such cases, patients are treated as if Rhesus negative until test results are available.) There are reported cases of patients becoming permanently Rhesus positive after receiving a transfusion, but the mechanism for this is still not understood very well.

A point that has recently gotten an unfortunate amount of infamy is transmission of bloodborne diseases through transfusions. Although blood donations are tested for diseases as a matter of protocol, there is no test in this world that is 100% accurate. (To be more precise, you want to look at the false negative rate: the rate of tests that come out negative for a disease when the sample is actually positive.) Stringent initial tests minimize the chance that diseases such as AIDS or the Hepatitis variants spread through bad blood, and continuous testing ensures that even donors who previously tested as clean can be identified as infected – after all, testing percentages compound, and the chances of someone with a disease passing repeated tests of his blood are vanishingly small indeed. Thanks to labeling standards on blood-based products, it is then possible to locate all products from this donor and destroy them, and even to identify people who have used them and get them tested and treated. Unfortunately, this process – while necessary – further reduces the already critical availability of transfusable blood.

However, particularly in battlefield medicine, you don't always have access to compatible blood, or even any transfusable blood at all. In such cases, it is possible to use volume expanders. These are liquids meant to substitute for blood in treating a variety of conditions, hypovolemic shock among them. However, volume expanders do not replace the oxygen-carrying red blood cells, which makes them unsuited for replacing large losses of blood – they're more of an emergency treatment. Volume expanders come in two types: colloidal or crystalloid. Colloidal expanders contain large molecules such as gelatin and are designed to treat patients with thinned-out blood, where lacking osmotic pressure can lead to cell damage if untreated. Crystalloid expanders such as saline solution or Lactated Ringer's solution include dissolved salts and tend to thin out blood, which reduces osmotic pressure. They are generally more available and cheaper than colloidal expanders. Whether or not one type or the other comes with a significantly better prognosis in treatment is still under debate.

Research into blood replacements – which mimic the oxygen-carrying function of real blood – is ongoing, with some promising developments based on both reconditioning animal blood and on suspending materials capable of carrying oxygen, such as fluorocarbons. The latter process actually led to the FDA approval of a substance called Fluorosol in the 1980s, an emulsion of perfluorodecalin with a stabilizer that was successfully used in some surgeries. Although this approach promised to provide a blood substitute with no risk of antigen reactions, infection risks or storage issues, in practice it proved limited. Natural blood has hemoglobin, a complex molecule that has a chemical affinity for oxygen great enough to "grab" it out of the air in the lungs. Perfluorodecalin, however, relies on oxygen becoming dissolved in it, which requires a much greater partial pressure of oxygen to "load" the fluid. This was only achievable by using hyperbaric chambers or giving pure oxygen to the patient. Also, Fluorosol (and the similar newer development OxyGent) were not intended as permanent replacements, but as surgical aid – their stabilizers biodegrade within hours inside the human body, at which point the fluorocarbons are simply breathed out. Cost issues and some worrying signs of damage to patients' immune systems have further stymied adoption.

Our fictional counterpart Ichor retains the base of a perfluorodecalin emulsion, but utilizes a stabilizer that does not biodegrade. The ability of fluorocarbons to carry large amounts of dissolved substances is used to enhance Ichor's ability to carry blood sugars beyond that of human blood, and by being able to carry dissolved oxygen, it retains the ability of other artificial blood replacements to oxygenate tissues where narrowed or damaged blood vessels would be too small to pass for natural red blood cells. The truly super-tech aspect of Ichor, however, is its use of "dumb" nanomachines to regulate partial gas pressure, store oxygen and enhance clotting. We call them "dumb" because unlike the multifunctional anthrocytes, they operate autonomously and only react to their environment, whereas anthrocytes are tied into the bionic systems and can be directed to perform specific tasks. Theoretical designs for such machines exist – look up Robert Freitas's respirocytes and clottocytes for our inspiration – and Ichor incorporates them to go beyond the performance limits of human blood. Without those nanomachines, Jaime and Sara would be rapidly out of breath when performing any strenuous activity, as their bionic limbs also require large amounts of oxygen to generate power, and enhanced clotting combined with the self-repair mechanism of their systems allows them to survive substantial injuries. In fact, the enhanced clotting process is so effective that even large injuries like gunshot wounds stop bleeding within seconds, though actually fixing the damage remains within the purview of the bionic system and its anthrocytes.

So, given how bionics and Ichor relate, could you use one without the other? The answer is yes, you certainly could. However, bionic limbs are less energy-efficient than natural muscles at the same power output, and would rapidly deplete blood sugar and oxygen levels if used at full power. While Jaime is certainly showing us that it's possible to be effective without superhuman strength, this wasn't the original intent, and exertion at superhuman levels would quickly tire an augment without Ichor, if not lead to worse consequences such as hypoglycemic shock. On the other hand, Ichor could be transfused into people without other augmentations to massively increase their endurance and wound clotting, but there's a simple reason for not doing that: Ichor's too expensive and too rare to be "wasted" on people who are not already augmented. Further, augments have a significant advantage even there: their bionic limbs can partially recycle Ichor as it wears out. An otherwise normal human would need about three times as much Ichor in constant transfusions to remain "topped up", and Berkut's not about to pay for that. (Not to mention that they're also way too paranoid to have it spread outside of their organisation.) Meanwhile, Sara's group only receives a very irregular supply which can barely keep Sara going, so they don't have any to spare for boosting regular humans, either.

On a more prosaic level, why is Ichor white? Primarily, aesthetics. White looks slightly alien and high-tech, and we're hardly the first writers who have white-colored artificial blood in the mix. We suspect this has to do with the fact that fluorocarbon emulsions actually are naturally white, milky fluids. Although we haven't made use of it in the story yet, the white color does make characters who use it a little paler than normal, again a bit of a visual thing. Also, since Lovecraft started the trend, "ichor" has been used as a generic catchall for the blood of monsters, often described as pitch black – we thought it'd be fun to tweak that. You may indeed be shocked to hear that horror writers didn't pull the word from thin air – Ichor is a name for the blood of the Greek gods. (You wouldn't want to have it as a transfusion, though, as the blood of the Gods was described as being extremely poisonous to humans.)

Finally, a bit of a personal appeal: blood transfusions are not only needed for treating injured people in emergency situations, but also for all major surgeries and some treatments that can lead to anemia, including many cancer therapies. Blood banks all over the world are busting their asses to keep up with the demand, and while a few promising ideas are on the horizon, in the medium term we will still be reliant on blood donations. Seriously, go donate blood if you can. It really does save lives.


	3. Chapter 3

And here's the third chapter of Recycled. You should be read up to Big Sister chapter eight. We're taking a bit of a break from Sara's story here since the next chapter contains revelations that require a little more development in the main story - don't fret, we're looking into a few alternatives for supplementary content. That said, enjoy!

* * *

><p>December 23rd 2004, 1422 PST (Zulu - 0800)<p>

Wolf Creek Facility, California, USA

Augmentation Lab 01

* * *

><p>Sara Corvus was awake.<p>

It had taken her a while to realize she was awake, because she hadn't felt anything, seen anything, or heard anything. But when she had felt something along her spine – felt pressure, as if she was lying on something – she realized that she was no longer dreaming.

She was blind, deaf and paralyzed. But she was awake.

Slowly, more sensations flooded in. She could feel herself breathe. Warmth covering her chest. She heard an echo of a whisper that became the trampling of a distant herd of elephants before settling on somebody working over her head with a pneumatic chisel. And when **that** faded back into something that sounded like people talking on the other side of a wall, she saw light.

A historic moment played out in the intensive care unit of the augmentation lab, and it drew quite a few spectators. The centerpiece was the heavy-duty institutional bed holding Sara Corvus. Physically, she was fully restored, if you graciously overlooked details such as her hair only slowly growing back after being shaved off for the surgery. She was hooked up to a spider's web of cables, wires and plastic tubes, and several monitors were mounted above her head showing a dazzling array of data. Reading that data, then, took someone like Dr. William Anthros. This was the moment of truth for the young surgeon, but as his constant glances at the monitors confirmed, everything was going quite well. Standing next to him were the two staff members who would be involved in Corvus's rehabilitation: Dr. Ruth Truewell, a field psychologist on loan from the CIA to observe the process, and Mr. Kim, a recent arrival about whom Will knew approximately nothing. Further in the back stood a 'nurse' – if a pistol-packing guard with medical training could be called that.

Will waited for Corvus's eyes to open; he tried to keep on a kind smile as she looked around the room.

"Hello, Sara," Will said. "My name is Dr. Anthros. I'm here to make sure that you're alright. Do you think you can speak?"

Corvus managed to shake her head weakly; only a weak gargle escaped her throat.

"It's alright," Will said, and then retrieved a penlight from his coat. "Can you follow the light with your eyes, please?"

He held the light in front of her and switched it on; Sara dutifully followed it, but the light looked…weak, as if the center of her vision had suddenly darkened. The effect quickly disappeared when Will switched the light off.

"Your throat is still adjusting, Sara. Try saying something again."

What happened? Sara tried to say. Her voice upgraded itself from gargling to stroke patient within two words.

"Again," Will ordered.

"…at happened?" she said. _Is that – that's not my voice_, she thought.

"You were injured on a patrol," Will said. "We brought you here and saved your life."

Instead of memories, Sara had a headache; the basics were there, then it got a little fuzzy with talking to Diaz in the hospital, and after that there were only single blurry images. "Water," she moaned. "Can I have some water, please?"

"Yes, in a moment," Will said. "Do you feel any pain, nausea or dizziness?"

"Headache," Sara replied. "My arms and legs, they are…tingling."

"That's normal," Will said. "Okay, that's all quite alright, Sara. We'll get you something to drink and then you can go back to sleep and rest a little. You must be tired."

"No," Sara said, surprising herself with how strong her voice suddenly sounded. Hadn't she been barely able to speak just a minute ago? "No, I'm awake and I –"

Her eyes fell down the length of the bed, where she saw her arms lying on top of the blanket that covered her. Her right hand was twitching. She looked to Will, who seemed concerned by this development.

"I'm not doing that," Sara said.

"This isn't authorized," Will said to the people standing with him. He turned back to her. "It's just, um, a muscle spasm, Sara. That's not uncommon with your kind of injuries. Uh, Smythe, can you get us some relaxant? Don't worry, Sara, we'll give you something that will help you sleep…"

Sara's eyes scanned the room. Her heartbeat was dead even, but she could feel her mind sharpening again. No windows in this room – paneling didn't look like any hospital she'd ever been to – solid metal door on the exit…

_He has a gun_, Sara heard something inside her whisper even as the twitches of her hand grew into a full-blown spasm.

"Smythe, come here, now," Will ordered. Sara's eyes flicked over to him, and she saw him and the other people move away from her bed. The look on the woman's face was…it was fear.

"What's going on?" Sara demanded, and tried to sit up. Slowly, she was willing her arms to move, but it seemed like they were made of lead.

"Smythe!" Will barked, and the guard moved in with a syringe of **something** that he started injecting into one of the IV bags attached to Sara.

"What's going on?" Sara screamed. The guard leaned over her, trying to force her down with one arm. "Let me go!"

With no warning, her left arm turned from lead weight to a pure extension of her will. It shot up from her side and grabbed Smythe's wrist. Sara saw her hand clamp closed on the man's arm, and he let out a blood-curdling scream at her touch. Sara's eyes widened in shock, and Smythe stabbed the syringe in his right hand at her. Before Sara knew what was happening, her right arm went up, and the syringe glanced off it. Then it drew back and the palm of her right hand slammed forward against his chin like a hydraulic piston. Even in her confusion, Sara could hear bones snap from the attack, but she felt no pain from the impact at all. Smythe immediately stopped struggling and collapsed like a side of pork cut off from its hook.

"Everybody out!" Will screamed. "Everybody out **now**!" They made for the door, and after one final fearful glance at Sara, Will closed the door behind him.

"What did you do?" Sara screamed after them. Her left hand finally let go of Smythe's arm, letting him slip to the floor. Sara reached for the mess of cables attached to her and started removing them, ignoring the beeping from the panel above her. Panic couldn't overtake her, but it could make her ask a lot of questions – and something was very wrong here, with this place, with these people, with what they had done to her.

Sara Corvus was no longer afraid. No, now she was **angry**.

* * *

><p>"Seal it off!" Will shouted at the lab workers when he cleared the outer door of the airlock. With a few bright red levers pulled, bolts slammed into place and valves hissed until the containerized laboratory – built as a self-sufficient unit for emergencies – was completely cut off from the outside, with heavy steel doors and a hermetic air seal containing the mess inside. The labs were organized at the very bottom of the underground facility as a precaution, and so the view of the shaft with the central spire and the modules hanging off it above was quite intimidating – not that anyone had the time to appreciate the view. As expected, klaxons were already blaring, and following his cue, Colonel Bledsoe and his soldiers were already standing outside on the massive concrete disc that constituted Wolf Creek's 'floor', preparing to go in.<p>

"What do you think you're doing?" Will asked him.

"We have a man down and an experiment on the loose," Bledsoe replied. "We'll go in with strobes and take her down. And the next time you wake her up, Dr. Anthros, maybe you should consider restraining her."

"Wait!" Truewell said; Will looked at her like he only just realized she was there at all. "We need to take a step back here, alright? If you go in there and fight her…"

"We're not fighting anyone," Bledsoe said. "Particularly not an augment. See these lights?" He tapped the flashlight mounted underneath his carbine. "They'll shoot a strobe pattern that will signal her systems to shut down. She'll hit the floor, we get our man out, and then Dr. Anthros can bring her back after we've properly secured her."

"But you still have guns," Truewell pointed out.

"I'm sure the strobes will work," Bledsoe said, shooting an acidic smirk at Will, "but I like being prepared."

"Listen," Truewell said, "do you have any idea what's going on inside her right now? If you attack her and treat her like a monster you need to put down, you'll just traumatize her further."

"The emotional wellbeing of that…operative…is secondary to getting our man out and treated for his injuries," Bledsoe retorted.

"I can talk her down," Truewell insisted.

"You're here to observe, Dr. Truewell," Bledsoe said. "I suggest you **observe** that I don't gamble with the lives of my men. Now get out of our way, we're going in."

It was said at Wolf Creek that Professor Anthony Anthros had the almost-supernatural power to appear wherever he was needed, even if the laws of physics frowned on that. More rational-minded employees attributed that to Professor Anthros regularly prowling the facility and keeping a watchful eye on all alerts, such that he could rush to see the situation for himself before anyone got around to specifically informing him. Here, too, he appeared from the nearby elevator just in time, flanked by an irate-looking Antonio Pope. Anthros wore his tweed suit like body armor, and his wrinkled face that usually performed a "kind uncle" impression had hardened into a mask.

"William!" Anthros barked. "Explain to me what the devil is going on down here!"

"Her right arm experienced abnormal activation patterns," Will said. "Somehow, this caused the rest of her systems to start up."

"Or put another way," Bledsoe threw in, "she woke up, took my man down and now she's loose in there with full power and a gun. We're going to go in and pacify her." Anthros threw a glare at him, so Bledsoe hastened to append a few words. "With your approval, of course. Sir."

"Dr. Truewell," Anthros said. His face was still the model of restraint even as his voice quivered with anger. "You seemed to have a different idea."

"I can talk to her," Truewell said. "She's doing this because she feels threatened. If I can explain to her that we're not trying to hurt her, I can get her to calm down and let us get Colonel Bledsoe's man out of there. Frankly, Sir, I don't see an alternative if you ever intend to work with her after this."

"Dr. Truewell, in this facility, only one person does not need to bother with explaining alternatives, and that is me," Anthros replied. "**Frankly**, I will send you back to Langley if you take that tone with me again. Now, give me an objective appraisal of what you think will happen if Colonel Bledsoe proceeds according to the contingency plan."

"We will confirm for her that we're her enemies," Truewell said. "And these strobes will shut down **everything**, right? You're talking about paralyzing her and putting her in total sensory deprivation until you switch her implants back on." She paused briefly. "Have you ever been in a sensory deprivation tank? The worst five minutes of my life. How long will it take until you let her see and hear again, Sir? She's in a very fragile state of mind and the last thing we should do is add more trauma to that."

"Still not very objective, but I think we might get something from your sincerity," Anthros said. "Colonel Bledsoe, prepare your team. Dr. Truewell, I'm giving you five minutes to show me that you can get results. Go in there, talk her down, and get my man out of there. If I think for a second that you can't control the situation, I will send in Colonel Bledsoe's team. Is that clear?"

"Yes, Sir," Truewell said.

"And William," Anthros said, "I suggest you have a better explanation for what happened in there when this is all said and done."

"…yes, Sir," Will said.

At the fringe of the conversation, Jae Kim stood and tried in vain to gather his thoughts. He was wondering how she had gone out of control…but then, seen from another angle, he was very impressed with how she had managed to activate the bionic limbs this quickly. Even if they had **wanted** her to be able to move, this was supposed to take at least a few days of adjustment and training to gain even rough motor control. Being able to access the combat programming – definitely way ahead of the schedule.

"You look satisfied," Pope said, and Kim finally noticed the soldier standing next to him.

"This is a horrible turn of events," Kim said, at once feeling a little embarrassed that his emotions were bringing out the Chinese accent again. "But I try to see the good in it. If she can do this now – then she will be unstoppable with training."

"Do you know anything about how this happened, then?" Pope asked.

"If you're implying that I –"

"I'm not implying anything," Pope declared. "I'm asking."

"No," Kim said. "No, Mr. Pope, I have no idea how she was able to move."

"I see," Pope said. "No matter. We'll find out."

"I did not sabotage this test," Kim said.

"We'll find out," Pope repeated.

* * *

><p>Inside the lab, Corvus staggered to her feet. It felt like she was walking on stilts – whatever they had done to her had clearly messed her up extensively, but she gritted her teeth and soldiered on. The guard who had tried to attack her was still alive, but bleeding quite badly from his shattered jaw; Sara didn't quite process how hard she must have hit him to do that. She literally couldn't believe that it was possible to punch someone hard enough to do this kind of damage, and so she quickly rationalized that he must have hit it on the bed's frame on the way down or something like that. She yanked the gun out of his belt holster – a flimsy thing that easily snapped when she pulled hard enough – and checked the gun. Looking at it brought more headaches, and then – then she saw something that wasn't supposed to be there. And yet she saw it, hovering over the gun, rattling off its minutiae like a spectral Jane's guide.<p>

"I'm not crazy," she told herself as she lurched around the bed. On a whim, she snapped the gun in her hand up and fired at the security camera across the room, shattering the housing and destroying the electronics within on her first shot. "Whatever you did to me, it's not going to work!" she shouted at the room. "You're fucking with the wrong marine!"

She figured they would try to come back in through the door. It wasn't going to open from inside, but maybe she could surprise them coming in and slip out that way. There was preciously little in the room that she could make use of, but her mind easily sketched out uses for what she did have. She grabbed the bed by its side and heaved it upward, turning it on its side to create a bit of cover for herself. She was in the middle of stripping the knocked-out guard for spare ammunition when she heard the crackle of a PA system coming online.

"Sara?" a woman's voice said; Corvus guessed it belonged to the woman who had been in the room with that Doctor. "Are you alright?"

Corvus dragged the unconscious guard with her behind the bed.

"Oh, I'm **just** fine," she shouted back. "A lot better than you thought I'd be, huh? So you either let me go, or I'll shoot my way out – your choice."

"Let's talk about that, then," Truewell said. "My name is Ruth."

"Nice to meet you, Ruth," Corvus replied. "Now help me get out of here or I'll help myself."

"Sara, you've got a more pressing problem than that," Truewell said. "There's a team of soldiers out here, and you've got one of them down on the ground next to you. I'm the only chance you have to get out of this without a fight."

"So, what, I talk to you or they're going to kill me?"

"Look, Sara, they don't want to hurt you, but that man needs medical treatment and they are going to do everything to get him out." After a moment, Truewell added "Just like you did everything to save Private Diaz."

"Read my file, huh?" Corvus said.

"Your packet, your personnel file, your AAR and the commendation," Truewell confirmed.

"Okay. Listen, you started this crap," Corvus said. "I didn't walk in here and start taking hostages. I don't know where I am and who the hell you people are! So you can see where that leaves me."

"Yes," Truewell said. "In need of a friend. Talk to me, Sara. I can help you."

"I think I'm not being clear enough," Corvus said. "How the hell am I supposed to trust anything anyone says when I don't even know who you people are?"

"We work for the US government," Truewell said.

"Uh huh," Corvus replied.

"Sara, I promise you'll get answers to your questions," Truewell said. "But right now, they see you as a threat. They're not going to tell you anything while they're planning how to take you down. I can keep them from putting that into practice. And if we can make a deal that lets them get their man to safety – then that's a basis for negotiation."

"Fuck negotiation," Corvus said. "They get their man, I get answers. Here's how this is going to work. You – and I do mean you, in person, Ruth – come in here. Then your friends can get their man out. If I see something I don't like" – Sara trailed off. Was she really doing this? It felt like she was bargaining for an escape from a bank robbery gone bad – and those kind of crime movies tended to end with a sniper taking out the bad guy. Except…she wasn't the bad guy, and this wasn't a bank. _Goddammit_, she thought, _how the hell did I get here?_

"Sara?" Truewell called. "Are you still there? You were saying something."

"Yeah, I'm still here," Corvus said, checking the gun again. "And I said that if I see something I don't like – well, I won't hesitate, alright?"

"Alright. Then that's the deal. I'm going to come into the room now. And you won't shoot me."

"I don't want to shoot anyone," Sara said. "Look, just get in here and you can have your man."

"I'll be right there."

* * *

><p>The second Truewell got off the microphone, she felt a tap on her shoulder. She turned to see Colonel Bledsoe holding out a tactical vest and a holstered gun.<p>

"Just in case," he said.

"No, I'm going in unarmed," Truewell said, and noticed that both Bledsoe and the elder Anthros were looking at her; the young Doctor Anthros was nowhere to be seen. "I don't want to look like a threat. And I'm not taking a **gun**."

"Right," Bledsoe said, drawing the gun back. "You're right. It's a bad idea to add another weapon to that situation, it's too volatile already. The last thing I want is her loose with two guns. It's bad enough that we're handing her another hostage on a silver platter."

"That, and I don't want to shoot her," Truewell said.

"Are you sure that feeling really is mutual?" Bledsoe asked. "If she shoots you, you'll wish you were wearing the vest. Police negotiators do it, it's just common sense. Take the vest."

"No."

"That is Doctor Truewell's choice," Anthros said. "Get my man out, Doctor. I'll leave the 'how' up to you."

"Yes, Sir." She turned to Bledsoe again. "Just be ready to move in when I tell you."

"Always," Bledsoe said.

* * *

><p>Truewell opened the lab's inner door and looked around. The bed was overturned as a makeshift bunker in the corner where it had once stood, and a small trail of blood told of a body being dragged behind it. She couldn't see Corvus, but odds were very good that was hiding behind the bed. Truewell hated admitting it, but right there, she was developing a very strong urge to rethink her approach. She could feel her heart all the way up to her throat, and that she was standing in a room with the only exit behind her didn't do wonders for her mental state, either.<p>

"Come in and close the door behind you," Corvus ordered from behind the bed. "I don't want anybody else coming in until I'm sure you're on the level."

"I'm closing the door now, Sara," Ruth said, turned around and eased the massive steel portal into its frame. The bolts locked it shut there, loud enough to give her another sweat attack on her palms. "Okay, the door is closed. Can I take a look at the guard now?"

"Yeah," Corvus called. "Come over here. No sudden moves."

The view behind the bed was grisly. Smythe was on the ground and not moving; Truewell couldn't even see if he was still breathing. Above him loomed Corvus, and Truewell froze at the sight. Corvus was still clad in her hospital gown, but with Smythe's belt fixed around her waist and his gun in her hand, aimed straight forward at Truewell. There was more than a little blood on her, and her eyes seemed to move constantly even while her hands stayed steady. It was, to sum it up, the look of someone who had been pushed to her limit, and Truewell prayed that she could still reach her.

"I'm Ruth," Truewell said.

"I figured that out," Corvus replied. A nervous smile showed on her face. "He's still alive, if you're wondering."

"Can I check?" Truewell said.

"Go ahead," Corvus replied. "Nothing funny."

Truewell nodded and took a knee next to Smythe. She felt for his pulse, found it and got back up again.

"Okay, he's alive," Truewell said. "You've got me, so can the soldiers get their man out now?"

"One moment," Corvus said. She got up carefully, and Truewell noticed that Corvus checked over the bed to make sure there were no surprises waiting for her there. With her gun still aimed at Truewell, she did a quick pat-down, but soon seemed satisfied that she wasn't concealing any weapons. "Okay, turn around."

Truewell turned around, and Corvus wrapped her left arm around her neck in a loose chokehold. "We're walking back and then we're sitting down," Corvus said. Then, more quietly, she added "I'm sorry."

"Sara, think about this," Truewell said. "I'm trying to help you. Taking me hostage is not going to help you." If she could just keep it together a little while longer…

Corvus maneuvered them back into the corner, and true to her word, she sat back down, forcing Truewell to sit in front of her. Back behind cover with a human shield and a gun aimed down the only possible approach, Corvus finally seemed placated. "Okay, call them in."

"Colonel Bledsoe," Truewell called out. "You can come in and retrieve your man."

In mere seconds, the door opened again, and the clacking of many boots sounded before the first soldiers peeked around the bed carefully. Looking at them, Corvus got another headache, and then there were more of these hallucinations that told her more than she ever wanted to know about…G36C carbines, it read. It actually got worse there; looking at the men spreading out before her, the hallucinations started listing their names and ranks.

"Yeah, that's right, I've got a gun," Corvus told them. "Grab your buddy and get the fuck out."

To their credit, none of the soldiers answered the provocation; two of them kept her in their sights, while the other two grabbed Smythe and carried him off. That done, the two remaining soldiers made for the door.

"Hold up," Corvus called. They froze in place. "We're all leaving this room. Anybody tries to lock me in, I **will** shoot."

"Hold your fire," Truewell said. "Do what she says." The soldiers stayed where they were, but they didn't prevent Corvus from getting back on her feet, either. One of them walked ahead, the other followed walking backwards to cover Corvus, and Corvus followed them, still keeping Truewell in front of her as a shield. Truewell could feel Corvus breathing down her neck, and the arm around her neck was warm, if unexpectedly dry. They were about halfway to the door when Corvus's breathing got more intense. Truewell couldn't see it, but behind her, Corvus squeezed her eyes shut.

"Goddammit…" Corvus whispered through gritted teeth.

"Are you hurt?" Truewell asked.

"No, I'm just running out of adrenaline," Corvus said.

"Lean on me," Truewell said. "I'll help you."

"…thank you."

* * *

><p>Outside the lab, Corvus and Truewell were greeted with a ring of soldiers; aside from Colonel Bledsoe and his team, the entire area had been evacuated. Corvus looked around and took in the view, particularly the wide open shaft stretching upwards from one concrete disk at the bottom to another at the top. On the gangways that crossed from the sides of the shaft to the central spire and the modules hanging off it, she spotted at least another dozen soldiers, all aiming rifles down at them.<p>

"What's your next move, Corporal?" the old man apparently leading the soldiers asked; the hallucination that hovered next to him read 'Colonel Jonas Bledsoe'. _That's who Ruth was talking to inside_, Corvus thought. She noted that his rifle was slung; instead, he was aiming a pistol at her.

"You have your man, now I'll have my answers," Corvus shot back. "So, where the fuck am I?"

"You're in a classified US government installation named Wolf Creek," Bledsoe replied. "Northern California, about 200 feet underground, at the bottom of a gauntlet of security measures designed to stop people from doing what you're doing right now. Was that clear enough, Corporal Corvus?"

"Bullshit," Corvus replied. That was, at this point, simple protective reflex; she wouldn't have known where to start in pointing out the problems with that tidbit of information, had somebody asked her.

"If you've got a better explanation, I'm all ears," Bledsoe said. "In the meantime, you're threatening a civilian and aiming a gun at me – which, I'll admit, is a lot farther than I thought you could get. If you wanted to prove that you deserve to be in this program, Corporal, you've succeeded. But I'm going to ask you nicely to give up the gun, release your hostage and come with us. You're in no shape to fight."

"What fucking program?" Corvus shouted. The anger was going strong, but it wasn't enough; much as she wanted to prove these people wrong, she felt like she was just a few steps away from collapsing.

"You're out of free answers," Bledsoe replied. Truewell gave him a 'What the hell are you doing?' look, then another in case the first one hadn't gotten the message across. "Stand down and we'll talk. You have my word on that."

"And if I don't trust you to keep your word?" Corvus said. "You've still got a few dozen of your men aiming their guns at me."

Bledsoe slowly reached for the radio unit clipped to his vest and pressed the send button.

"All units," he said, "stand down from alert and return to your positions." The soldiers around him slowly lowered their weapons, and a glance upward confirmed that the snipers were moving away. Bledsoe met Corvus's eyes over the sights of his pistol. "See? Now it's even, Corporal."

"Sara, please," Truewell whispered. "We can help you."

"He won't let me walk out, will he?" Corvus whispered back. "Okay. Okay. I'll play nice."

Corvus unwrapped her arm from Truewell's neck, letting her go. Truewell took a few steps before two soldiers ushered her away. Without her support, Corvus found it difficult to keep standing, though by some miracle her hands weren't shaking. After a few long seconds, she took her left hand off the pistol and held it up in her right one, almost stumbling when she took a step back. Immediately the soldiers were on her, and she saw Bledsoe lower his gun, though his face didn't seem to relax. At this stage, Corvus expected some degree of 'pacification' (read: beatdown) from the soldiers that swarmed her, but instead, they grabbed her by her arms and supported her, even as they retrieved the gun from her right hand. With a bit of cooperative effort, they maneuvered her into a waiting wheelchair, and Corvus finally let out a breath she'd been holding.

"Sara!" a grating voice called from the sidelines; Corvus turned to see Will approaching, bearing hands full of medical gear. "How are you feeling?" he asked. "Are you in pain?" To the medical personnel that followed him, he gave quick orders. "We need to get her hooked up again, check the IV ports for injuries, start her on a glucose drip and get me a system readout as soon as possible." After a moment, he added "And somebody get her a glass of water."

* * *

><p>At the sidelines, Truewell sat on one of the enormous spire supports, cradling a cup of hot coffee with her unsteady hands. Her chest was tight, as if her body was tensed for a blow that wouldn't quite come. One benefit of psychological training was recognizing the signs of her own distress. If she had the choice, she would have gone to the surface, run into the woods and let the tension go with a nice scream. She was just bottling it up, not giving her body the chance to work through the trauma, but she couldn't afford the impression of weakness now. The reason for that stood next to her; Professor Anthros wore a small smile and laid his hand on her shoulder. Truewell pretended that that was comforting even when her body didn't want to be touched.<p>

"Impressive work, Doctor," Anthros said. "I will make sure to put in a good word for you with Langley."

"Thank you, Sir," Truewell said. "What will happen to Sara Corvus now?"

"My son will see to her health for the moment," Anthros said. "Oh, don't worry, I have no intention of overreacting to her outburst. In fact, I understand her reaction quite well. As soon as she is physically able and cooperative, we will begin with her training as planned."

"And if she doesn't want to?" Truewell asked. "If she's not willing to cooperate?"

"Well, I'm sure that we will find a way to convince her," Anthros said. "Again, Doctor, you sound like you already have an idea of your own."

"I can just tell you what I see, Sir. I'm here to observe because Berkut does not have any psychologists of their own to begin with. What I've read – and what I've seen – paints Corvus as a difficult personality. She's highly individualistic, burned out on the military in general and resents taking orders. And, well, she's determined and cool under pressure. If she feels like a prisoner here, she'll likely attempt to escape again, but the next time she'll be fully recovered and have a plan."

"Hmm," Anthros said. "And you think Colonel Bledsoe would not be able to stop her?"

"Sir," Truewell said, "I think she'd die before surrendering again."

"That would be regrettable," Anthros said. "So, when can you start?"

"Beg your pardon?"

"You're capable, you're read in and you have an existing relationship with Corvus," Anthros said. "That puts you in the enviable position of being my first choice for the job by a fair margin. You have, even if you did not realize it, already provided your application. Name your price and your conditions, and I will see to it that you're transferred to Berkut, Doctor Truewell."

"I can – I **should** start right now, Sir," Truewell said. "Where did you take her?"

"To laboratory three," Anthros said. "I believe they're about done with stabilizing her."

"Then I have to talk to her," Truewell said.

"Very well," Anthros said. "We will discuss the details of your position here at a later time, then."

* * *

><p>Augmentation Laboratory 03 looked a lot like 01 (and 02, and 04, for that matter), to the extent that walking into it, Truewell felt like time had simply been wound back to an hour ago. Corvus was in a new bed, connected to a fresh assortment of cables and IV lines. Well, to be fair, there was one difference: Corvus was no longer lying more or less peacefully in the bed. Instead, she was sitting up, with her knees drawn in. Her arms were wrapped around in front, tensed as if Corvus was preparing to pounce on the next person to get in range. Her head was low; when Truewell entered, Corvus raised it just enough for her piercing eyes to become visible. Truewell noted that there was an empty plastic cup lying across the room. Obviously, nobody had felt the need to sound the alarm for that, though they had left Corvus alone.<p>

"Hey," Truewell said. "How are you doing, Sara?"

"Great," Corvus replied flatly. "Incredibly great. I'm the happiest girl on the planet."

"I'm sorry for how we treated you," Truewell said.

"Oh, that?" Corvus scoffed. "Why should I be upset about **that**?" She took a breath. " I've only been **kidnapped** and **experimented on!**" Corvus fumed. A wayward glance at the cup lying across the room told of her reaction to seeing Anthros again. "Doctor Asshole was here earlier, talking about what he did to save my life. He's got good reflexes, I'll give him that."

"He told you about the augmentations," Truewell said.

"He cut off my arms and my legs and my **eyes** and my **guts!**" Corvus spat. Her right hand balled into a fist. "Did he expect me to be fucking **grateful**? That smug motherfucker is proud of what he did to me, what he turned me into..." Corvus trailed off and suppressed a sob. "Now look at me."

Corvus squeezed her eyes shut and tightened her lips. It looked like she was trying to wring out a few tears, but Truewell knew that wouldn't happen. In the long list of things they had taken from her, the ability to cry was a mere footnote.

"Do you want to talk about it?" Truewell asked. After a bit of hesitation, she closed the distance and sat down at the foot end of Corvus's bed.

"Whatever," Corvus said, turning her head away. "There's nothing to talk about. He tore me apart and turned me into...a thing."

"Sara, you're still you," Truewell said. "The augmentation doesn't make you any less of a human, or a person."

"Bullshit."

"I'm not going to lie to you, Sara, this won't be easy," Truewell said. "This will change your life, and it's going to be tough to adjust for you. But being confused, scared, even angry…those are all normal reactions to what happened to you."

"You mean what was **done** to me," Sara spat back. "By **you **and your friends."

"Sara, I had no part in that," Truewell replied. She felt her own posture tighten up, an unconscious reaction to how Corvus looked at her. "I work for the CIA, not for Berkut."

The second she said that, Truewell saw the gears start turning in Corvus's head. No doubt she was still in the dark about her situation, a move from Anthros and Bledsoe that was certainly intentional. But on the other hand, that gave Truewell a potential handle on Corvus as a trusted source of information.

"Assuming I believe you - then what are you doing here?" Corvus asked.

"I'm here to observe the procedure and report back on how Berkut treats you," Truewell said.

"And what do you see?" Corvus said.

"A lot of people who are so convinced of the obvious righteousness of their actions that they don't need to justify anything they do," Truewell said. "Arrogance, hubris, and blatant disregard for you as a person. And a wounded soldier who's being left alone with a lot of pain and a lot of questions."

"I can manage pain," Corvus said, withdrawing a little. "It's - it's not knowing what I am. I woke up and I'm no longer **me**..."

"If that's how you feel, then we can talk about that," Truewell said. "The important part is that you talk about it with someone. I've worked with a lot of people who were wounded in the line of duty, and it's never easy to adjust. And it's even harder for soldiers like you. You've been taught for years to tough it out, to keep quiet about your problems."

Corvus didn't reply.

"But please trust me on this, Sara," Truewell said. "Bottling up your feelings won't help you. You've experienced a trauma, and you need to work through it – at your pace, but you need to work through it. I've helped other people through this. I can help you, if you want it."

"Fine, I'll think about it," Corvus said, sounding half-sincere, half-eager to get Truewell out of her face about the matter. "But I can't do anything about that right now." She thought for a moment. "I want to know how this is going to work. Starting with how long they're going to keep me in this cage."

"Dr. Anthros wants to keep you here for observation," Truewell said, "but I'll see about getting you moved to regular quarters as soon as possible."

"Regular quarters," Corvus scoffed. "I bet that's something to look forward to. At least I'll be away from that creep."

"I think there's a sublevel or two near the top of the facility that's essentially just quarters. They're furnished apartments, with a bathroom, TV and a kitchenette. But I don't have one, so I can't tell you any details."

"Where **do** you live, then?" Corvus asked.

"A little motel room in the nearest town," Truewell said.

"Why?"

"I – I don't like rooms without windows," Truewell said. "I tried sleeping here for a night. I just couldn't get any rest, so I drove into town at 2 AM, found a motel, woke up the motel owner, apologized a few times for waking up the motel owner..."

Corvus's expression did not move.

"It's hard out there for a claustrophobic," Truewell said.

"Maybe you should see somebody about that," Corvus shot back.

Truewell smiled. "Why do you think I went into psychology, Sara? Helping people is great, but when I started, I just wanted to help myself. And I am in therapy and I have made progress, but therapy isn't a cure-all. I've learned how to deal with my phobia. And part of it is allowing myself to have limits and feel afraid…appropriately." Her smile withdrew a little, tempered by bad memories. "It was a little difficult to explain to my college love why I broke out in tears when he held me too tight once."

"**That **would freak me out, too," Corvus said. "So, except for you, is this whole place staffed by assholes and robots?"

"They're not the most sociable bunch," Truewell said. "But hey, that's why I'm here." Truewell grasped Corvus's left hand. It was warm and smooth and dry, as if it had come out of an oven ten minutes ago. "I'm here for you, Sara, okay? If you have any problems or issues, or just want to talk…"

"Okay, enough with the touchy-feely now," Corvus replied. "Anyway, thanks for…well, keeping my dumb ass from getting shot. I've got a lot to process, but - looks like I have a good taste in human shields."

"Yes, but we're not doing that again," Truewell said. "I'll be honest, I'm still shaking from that."

"I've had better plans," Corvus said. "But for what it's worth - I'm sorry."

"It's okay, Sara," Truewell said. Corvus's hand tightened a little, but she was clearly still conscious of how careful she had to be not to hurt Truewell. "I forgive you."

Sara stifled a tiny laugh. "It sounds just a bit ridiculous when you say it out loud," she said, "but thank you."

"Helps, doesn't it?" Truewell replied with a smile.

"I guess," Corvus said. "Well, Ruth, I hate to throw you out, but I have a date in five minutes, so you'll have to leave."

"A date?" Truewell asked. "You work fast."

"Not like that!" Corvus coughed. "This Kim guy announced himself for 4 PM. I got that he wanted to talk to me about the physical therapy stuff. Do you know anything about him?"

"He's Chinese," Truewell said. "That's the only thing I've found out so far about him."

"Keeping secrets is a hobby for your friends, huh?"

"It's that kind of place," Truewell said. "And about that - do you have any hobbies? I'd like to get you something to pass the time with - I wanted to request a TV, but I thought I'd ask you first."

"TV's okay, I guess." Corvus shrugged. "I like drawing things."

"Like people?" Truewell asked.

"More like bridges and buildings," Corvus said. "Lately I've gotten a lot of practice with bridges."

"Okay, I have – "Truewell said, rummaging through her things. "I have this notepad and…this ballpoint pen." She held the two items up. "Um, I can run out into town and see if they've got art supplies, or maybe someone here likes to draw and can spare some, I could ask around –"

"That will do," Corvus said, quickly taking both. "Now, do you mind?"

* * *

><p>In the few minutes she had, Corvus worked quickly. It was tempting to try and get some rest, but first she had to write. She didn't know how reliable her own memories would be, so putting her thoughts to paper seemed prudent.<p>

_Situation:_

_Was talking to Diaz in hospital. After that? Anthros mentioned that I was injured on patrol. Try to remember!_

_Woke up in facility. Underground, heavy security. Went out of their way to not shoot me. Names mentioned: "Wolf Creek" (facility), "Berkut" (organization). Possible location in N Cali? Cannot confirm._

_Was operated on. Artificial body parts (where did tech come from?), known: arms, legs, eyes, probably more. **Definitely** feel stronger. Hallucinations. Can't feel a lot of my body. Took down a guy in five seconds, automated response?_

_People:_

_Dr. (William? Don't remember clearly) Anthros. Claims he did the surgery. Creep._

_Colonel (Jonas? (hallucination)) Bledsoe. In charge of security? Hardass. Claims DoD involvement, ex-military or pretending to be._

_Dr. Ruth Truewell. Psychologist? Trying to get in my good graces. Claims to be CIA. Need to find out who is really involved here._

_? Smythe ? Took him down. Haven't seen since, might be injured._

_Tons of soldiers_

_Mr. Kim? Physical therapy?_

The door opened; Corvus quickly stuffed pen and notepad under her blanket. The man who entered was just a bit shorter than her and dressed in black from head to toe. Black boots, black slacks, a black thermal shirt - and he had matching raven black hair, slicked back and bound into a small ponytail. Having spent a few months in forward deployment in Iraq, Corvus immediately spotted that he also sported a very smooth shave; this was a guy who took the time to lather up every morning. He probably used a straight razor, too. He regarded her with a serious gaze from behind his East Asian features.

"I am Jae Kim," he said. "I will help you regain your strength."

"I am Sara Corvus," she replied, "and I don't need your help."

"Then how is it that you are lying in that bed when you were already making your escape earlier?" Kim asked.

Corvus glared at him.

Kim shook his head. "You're in much better condition than anyone with your injuries should be," he said. "But the weakness you felt earlier will not just go away. The more you work with me, the sooner you can walk out of this room."

"Well, whose fault is it that I'm here to begin with?" Corvus asked. "I didn't ask for this."

"You had no choice," Kim nodded. "But I cannot change what happened. You must focus on recovering from it. If you refuse to cooperate with me, I cannot do anything about that; you are my patient and I am opposed to using threats or violence to get my way."

"How **kind** of you," Corvus spat.

"If you change your mind, you can send for me." Kim's eyes narrowed. "Does your arm still tremble?"

Corvus held up her right arm to show it.

"Steady as a rock," she said.

"Can you flex your fingers?" Kim asked.

Corvus balled her fingers into a fist; strangely enough, her middle finger stayed upright. Kim raised an eyebrow at that.

"You've made your feelings clear," he said. "Move that finger, too, please."

"I can't," Corvus said, looking at her hand and the frozen finger. "Great technology you guys have there."

"Do you allow me to inspect it?" Kim said.

"Make it quick," Corvus said.

Kim walked to the side of her bed; his stride suggested military drill, but the frequency was off. _Duh, Chinese_, Corvus thought to herself.

He grasped her arm by the wrist with his left hand and took hold of her finger with the right. "The third knuckle joint is out of alignment," he said after feeling it for a second. "Likely a manufacturing defect triggered by striking Corporal Smythe. I can reset the finger, if you permit it."

"Do it."

"You may wish to look away," Kim said.

Corvus's look pointedly snapped up to him and then back to the hand. She wanted to see this, because all of what he had done so far felt like nothing. She had to see it. And so she watched him pull the finger out and bend it back. The mere sight made her slightly queasy; getting her finger bent like that seemed like part of a particularly nasty pain compliance hold, so much so that she could easily picture herself on her knees begging for the pain to stop - if, indeed, there was any. With another powerful and deft pull, Kim reseated the finger and then let go off it. Corvus flexed it; it seemed to work okay now, and that was enough for her.

"It should be alright now," Kim said. "I will leave you to your thoughts."

"Actually, Jae, there is one thing you could help me with," Corvus said.

"What is it?" Kim asked.

"Get that son of a bitch Anthros in here," Corvus said. "We need to **talk**."

* * *

><p><em>Character Commentary: Ruth Truewell<em>

Why are we spending so much time with Ruth?

In the series, we'd classify Ruth as cold. The way she dresses and styles herself, the way she acts and talks, everything she is speaks to distance. She is Berkut's psychologist, but apparently quite capable in field operations, proving to be a good shot and handy with improvised explosives during the second episode. In the third episode, she comes up with some incisive comments on Heaven Van Fleet's emotional development; in turn, Heaven half-jokingly asks if Ruth is lesbian. (No, we did not find that funny at all.) We looked at this package and tried to figure out how it all fits together.

First off, we did a bit of a personality transplant. You'll find that our Ruth, while she strives to be professional, can be very empathetic and get people to open up to her. In the series, that was part of Antonio's Pope vaguely-defined shtick, but we thought it made more sense to give that trait to the trained psychologist - after all, that's all about making people feel safe and secure enough to open up to you. (In turn, our Pope got the stony-faced professionalism and cutting insight, which goes better with our background for him as a military investigator.)

Getting back to the why, we felt that Jaime and Sara needed someone they could talk to within Berkut to justify them integrating into the organization. In the series, Jaime was chatty with Nathan (but didn't go beyond that) and Antonio Pope approached her under false pretenses, thus hobbling whatever trust Jaime could have in him from the start. Sara carried on a secret relationship with Jae Kim, but that fell flat for us because we didn't see any of it really play out. (In our opinion, characters reminiscencing about the past is less effective than showing that past. Hence the preponderance of flashbacks in our stories.) And, well, Jae Kim never was particularly well-defined. We're working on that.

Ruth made a good candidate, then. As Berkut's psychologist, it's her job to get close to them and to help them work through their feelings. How close, though? That question immediately opens up several juicy conflicts. How much of the closeness is the job, how much is Ruth genuinely looking for friends - and how much could it be viewed as deliberate manipulation to strengthen the loyalty of both bionic women to Berkut? By making Ruth an outsider to Berkut, we can keep her ultimate loyalties in the dark a little while longer.

One thing we made up out of whole cloth is Ruth's claustrophobia. As phobias go, it's certainly widespread enough. Although it's a complex spectrum out there, Ruth suffers from both conditions commonly called claustrophobia: a fear of being unable to escape confined spaces, and a fear of suffocation. These phobias often combine with social anxieties - claustrophobia attacks cause physical distress, and many sufferers are afraid that people who will witness these symptoms will think badly of them. This is, however, a learned response to the phobia that develops over the sufferer's life - in a seeming paradox, this can lead to severe claustrophobics acting similar to agoraphobics and becoming scared of leaving their "safe" home. (As a point of order, agoraphobia is not fear of open spaces as such - it is fear of crowds and potential social embarrassment.) If you put stock in evolutionary psychology, some scientists have theorized that claustrophobia was an adaption to living in caves, where being constantly aware of one's surroundings and mindful of escape routes was an important survival skill.

As with many phobias, there's no silver bullet in therapy, but for many people, a combination of drugs and controlled exposure has proven helpful. Behavioral therapy depends on which form the patient suffers from, but can often be done with relatively easy means. For example, many sufferers of the "no escape" type have found it helpful to train themselves by riding elevators, working their way up from simply stepping into one to riding it for one floor up to using it regularly. In this way, claustrophobics can slowly recondition their bodies and minds to accept that they are not in danger in such situations. Suffocation fears are a bit harder to nail down and therapy must necessarily address the specific situations these patients are afraid of. Learning to deal with physical contact and water confidence courses are common. As with all such therapies, the pace must be set by the patient, and it is recommended that patients keep diaries of their thoughts and feelings along the way to help both them and the therapist gauge their progress.

Drug therapy focuses on anti-anxiety medication and combating the physical symptoms such as rapid heartbeat and excessive sweating with beta blockers - in a vicious circle, phobia sufferers who experience this physical reaction of their body will then often suffer from anticipatory anxiety, which worsens the attack in turn. Ruth doesn't seem to take any medication, so depending on your personal level of cynism, she either thinks she doesn't need them, has made bad experiences with these or is afraid of being seen as unreliably if she medicates openly. As seen in Paradise Regained, recent stress has made her slide back into a smoking habit she apparently kicked some time before. This, too, is unfortunately true to real life - quitting tobacco is difficult even when measured against other addictive substances, and backslides are common. After all, there is no true cure for addiction. Once you're hooked, you may be able to quit, but the urges remain with you.

As Ruth told Sara, it was trying to deal with and understand her condition that steered Ruth toward her career. Ruth aimed towards a Doctor of Psychology (Psy.D) degree and worked as an intern for the Veteran's Administration, where she came into contact with many military veterans in need of psychological treatment. Her interest in how people reacted to such high stress situations as combat ultimately led to her taking a job as operational psychologist for the CIA, where she quickly established herself as the go-to woman for evaluating field agents the agency considered "fragile". Ruth's tradecraft skills come from rubbing shoulders with veteran agents and keeping herself in a constant training cycle, though she would acknowledge herself that despite being (by now) a veteran agent herself, she still lacks some field experience. We think this is a good take on having a CIA agent who's not your everyday fictional "secret operative" type - and hey, it's at least as realistic as anything in Burn Notice.

Finally, on a meta-level - hey, this show is called "Bionic Woman". You betcha we're paying attention to the female characters. Given that women in the US military are still not allowed into "frontline combat" type professions, it is sadly realistic that Berkut, an organization that recruits extensively from military special forces units, is almost entirely male. Our goal, then, was not to make Berkut more egalitarian than the real military, but to find sensible reasons for the female characters to be there, and sensible things for them to do that would naturally put them in the spotlight. And having Ruth caught between being the confidante of the bionic women on one side and working directly on Bledsoe's orders on the other side - it doesn't get much more central to the plot than that.


	4. Chapter 4

Hey all, this introduction is a little more somber, because - well, remember how we said that "Recycled" was where we felt free to get a little darker? Yeah, this one's about not so nice things. If you don't want to read about violence against women, consider this a big damn trigger warning. That said, we've been writing and rewriting and rethinking this one for literal years by now, so we hope that you'll agree that we didn't do this for cheap thrills. We just felt it was part of the story that needed to be told so you can understand where Sara Corvus is coming from. You should finish "Big Sister" before reading this.

* * *

><p>William Anthros sat in his office and <strong>thought<strong>.

In the space of a few hours, what was to be Will's crowning achievement had turned into a failure. Oh, he could lie to himself, the usual "learning experience" claptrap, but in his heart, he knew that he had failed, that his insufficient planning had allowed the situation to turn on him again. His usual mistake; he had not accounted for other people. He had not spoken out loudly enough against making Corvus a candidate - her problems with authority were visible from Mars. He had not checked Kim's work - left such an important part of the project as programming the kinetic feedback loop and its movement sequencing to that Chinese turncoat. And what, in God's name, was Smythe thinking about not having the sedative at the ready? The wasted seconds had allowed Corvus to attack him, but of course the responsibility fell back on Will's shoulders.

He should have restrained her. After the fact, Bledsoe made that pragmatic call and deservedly rubbed it in Will's face, as Will had expected. It wasn't the first time the idea had come up, and Will felt the anger burn much stronger because he had shot it down himself, intending to make Corvus wake up more comfortably. But she had just thrown his kindness back in his face; wasn't that, in fact, the whole story of what had happened here? Will's teeth gnashed at the thought. _Goddamn her_, he thought,_ for making me look like a fool. For taking advantage of me._

A soft chime rang from the door. Will had made it clear that people were to use that instead of knocking on the door; the chime could be turned off, after all, for when he was too deep in the zone to be disturbed. Maybe he should have turned it off for this occasion, too, but on the other hand, Will - at least - acknowledged that he would likely be needed in these hours.

"Come in!" he called. The door opened, and Jae Kim stepped in, closing the door behind him. Will shared Major Pope's mistrust of the Chinese man, but unlike certain other people, Mr. Kim always made a point out of being respectful; that earned him some points.

"Doctor Anthros," Kim said. "Corporal Corvus wishes to see you."

"Is she still combative, then?" Will asked.

"Agitated," Kim replied. "She is recovering much swifter than I thought she would. Impressive."

Will glared at Kim, but said nothing.

"I did not mean to make light of Corporal Smythe's injuries," Kim added.

"You don't have to tell **me** that," Will said. "Not that there is anyone you have to tell, except maybe for Smythe, if he ever comes back. You see, Mr. Kim, Colonel Bledsoe doesn't care that she came close to killing one of his men, took someone hostage and God knows what she would have done to continue her escape. These things are immaterial to him; he can always get more Special Forces leftovers to fill his private little army with. No, he's looking for the next thing and he's willing to have other people pay whatever price for it. Corvus is the best thing that could have happened to him. He wanted a bionic attack dog and from the looks of it he's damn well getting one. We've all done a great job with that."

"I am here to restore a soldier, Doctor Anthros, not to build a weapon," Kim replied. "It was my impression that this is a shared goal."

"Restore her ability to kill and follow orders, maybe - I'm more interested in **saving lives**," Will said. "All of this running around in secrecy, destroying anyone on the cusp of technological breakthroughs" - his eyes focused on Kim again - "all of this is just the last gasp of Cold Warriors desperately seeking to hold on to their pathetic illusion of power. They want to keep playing the only game that they know the rules of, and if the world tries to change, they strike it down and smash it, all to force it to stay broken in a way they can understand. But they have to keep using more and more force to do so, and in their struggle against change there will be innumerable casualties. There will be many more men like Corporal Smythe who follow orders and pay the price while men like Colonel Bledsoe play their games. No, I do not share that goal. I am not a follower and I am not a backroom chessmaster. I have created something great, Mr. Kim, and it pains me to see it abused. One day soon, bionic technology will be used responsibly to **better** mankind. **That** is my goal. Not this - this figurative compact with the devil that funded the development."

"I understand," Kim said. "So, you do not want to speak to Corporal Corvus, then?"

"Oh, no, do not mistake my opposition to the military as a refusal of my responsibilities as a physician - I **am** going to see my patient," Will said, rising from his chair. "But she is a grunt, and a violent one even in that. For everyone's safety, I have to arrange for the force she will understand."

* * *

><p>Sara Corvus laid in her bed and tried not to drive herself crazy. Her body – and she would have to determine exactly how much of it <strong>was<strong> still her – reacted in a comfortingly familiar way to this situation: a persistent low-intensity stress that played tricks on her sense of time, the permanent warning signs of too much adrenaline. In a word, combat. That seemed a lot more fitting when the airlock-like door to her room opened and four security guards with M4 carbines (and the matching floating labels) entered the room. They looked, for lack of a better word, a bit rougher than the guards Sara had encountered so far, no doubt a new security measure. Only when they were in position did Dr. William Anthros enter the room. Sara very much regretted having thrown the drinking cup at him earlier; now she was thirsty and out of ammunition.

"Um, hello, Sara," Will said, trying to smile. "I think we may have gotten off on the wrong foot, so..."

"Ho-ho, wrong foot," Sara shot back. "I didn't know you were a **comedian**."

Will exhaled without saying anything; Sara could see two of the guards exchanging a 'Here we go again' glance. "Sara, please," Will said. "I know this is very difficult and that you did not ask for this. I did what I did to save your life."

"Oh, and I'm not sucking your dick for it, is that it?" Sara said. "You're damn right I didn't ask for this. Because if you **had** asked, I would have said **no!**"

Will's shoulders slumped at that, and oddly enough, that gave Sara a moment of pause. He wasn't fighting with her – she was just attacking him.

"I want to get out of here," Sara said, dialing the aggression back a bit. "I want to take a shower and I want some clothes. And when I'm done with that, I want to make a damn phone call."

"I'm sorry, Sara, but we cannot let you have any contact with outsiders -"

"We?" Sara asked. "**We?** Are you in charge here or what?"

"That's not my decision to make."

"Then I'm wasting my fucking time talking to you, huh?" Sara said. "I'm not your pal Sara, I'm not even your fucking patient because **you** did this to me. I'm your **prisoner**. I'm not going to do **anything** you or your bosses want if you don't do something for me in return. These are my first demands. You want something from me, you get me what I want first. I think they call that quid pro quo, Doctor."

Will's face developed red spots that reminded Sara just a little of an apple. She might have noticed his heavier breathing if she hadn't been on a roll.

"Yeah, that's Latin," she continued. "They teach you that in med school, right? Or were you too busy learning how to mutilate women?"

The red on Will's face had turned from dull to bright in seconds, and the sharp breaths he had taken were unceremoniously kicked back out of his mouth. "**SHUT UP!**" he screamed, loud enough for Sara to feel herself flinch back a little. He quickly turned away from her, ran his hand through his hair, tried to calm down – and when he turned back, he had not succeeded.

"My apologies, **Corporal**, that was not appropriate," he said, forcing some steel into his breathless voice. "Get up and we will escort you to the showers. Captain Ginsburg, see that you find some clothes for the Corporal."

"Sir," one of the guards answered, lowered his rifle and left the lab. Sara noticed the remaining three raising their carbines a bit to compensate.

"After you, Corporal," Will said.

* * *

><p>The second time Sara Corvus left the bionics lab, it was on her own two feet with nobody's shoulder to rest on. It wasn't so much that she felt fine as it was that she no longer felt much of anything - physically. Her emotions, however, were still cooking with gas, and Escape Plan Bravo was already under construction. Sara made careful mental note of every detail she could glean from the guards, from the architecture to how this "Berkut" outfit seemed to operate. She briefly considered the possibility that what she was seeing was what they wanted her to see, that this was theater or worse, some sort of illusion, but she quickly dismissed the thought: not because she thought it was impossible (she knew better than to assume <strong>that<strong>) but because if it was true, that meant she was fucked, and she wasn't going to accept that. _First assumption,_ Sara thought. _This is not some Matrix bullshit._ After a moment, she revised that to: _I am not insane._

The way across the concrete floor of the large vertical shaft gave Sara a few opportunities to look around and take in the design. In the middle of the shaft ran a column of what she concluded to be reinforced concrete. She found that it was fairly wide at the base – no doubt to better distribute its ground pressure on the concrete ground, though she didn't speculate how it was anchored. The shaft then tapered as it went higher to lighten the compressive load on its lower part. The very top was anchored to yet more concrete on top. With all the modules and walkways hanging off this central column, the entire structure resembled a metal wasp nest built around some Soviet-tastic concrete monument. From Sara's combat engineer point of view, that was several different kinds of stupid and unnecessary, except for one advantage: it made getting up the shaft without access to an elevator very difficult, and conveniently enough, the laboratory units were at the bottom. _Good fields of fire, too,_ Sara thought, recalling the soldiers on the walkways overlooking her first escape attempt. _They can just shoot down until I'm dead._

When their little escort reached the elevator, she heard one of the soldiers radio for the cab to be sent down. There were no controls down here or, as she soon saw, in the cab itself. The cab was roomy and plain in a cargo elevator style, big enough to send down two dozen soldiers or two tons of equipment; that still didn't account for the heavy isolated laboratory units, but those had probably been lowered down the shaft by crane, ditto for the hanging modules above. _Logistics must be a total fucking bitch_, Sara thought. She found herself against the back wall of the cab, surrounded by the three soldiers, though they kept a respectful distance. Will stood in a corner with his back to her, almost hiding behind the largest of the soldiers. Sara scanned him: he had a look about him that she couldn't quite decide whether it was Filipino or more Samoan, was built like a powerlifter and had a small purple shock of hair peeking out under his helmet. The closest analogy she could think of for his expression was that of a grazing cow: a look of weary indifference to the universe at large. The floaty text told her that his name was Adolpho Sagabaen. _Okay, Filipino then,_ she thought. The guy in the middle was a more Hispanic type, wiry with a gaunt face and eyes that seemed to be glued to her. Sara met his look, but he never flinched. She looked on to Guy Number Three, a tall African-American with an apologetic half-smile.

"You should know," Will said, "that I did all of this to save your life. I'm not saying 'Don't be angry', because, well, we can't choose how we feel about things. But you can choose how you think about this. I think that, maybe, if you think of this as a second chance –" Sara snorted in response – "I think that that would be a good way to think about it. Ah, I'm sure Dr. Truewell will talk to you about that. I hear you two get along well."

Sara didn't reply; Will seemed to get the hint.

The elevator cab stopped after what Sara judged to be about fifty meters, having estimated the height of the wall tiles lining the elevator track and counted how many of them they'd passed by on the way up - next level engineering ninja shit. Sara wasn't sure how useful that information would be, but then again, this was the first time she'd had to bust out of a secret underground supervillain lair; taking in as many details as possible and sorting them out later seemed like a good idea. More importantly, it made her feel like she was in control, that she wasn't being led like a lamb to the slaughter, but instead conducting a little recon on her own terms. The door opened; Will stepped out first and to the side, then the soldiers backed out and formed up on the sides of the walkway ahead. The Hispanic guy – Calavera, according to the floaty text – motioned with his gun for Sara to step past him and walk in front of them again. Sara complied, and then briefly reconsidered the logistics of having to haul everything destined for the labs below from – presumably – another elevator all the way over here. There was a certain paranoid, ass-backward logic to it. Anyone who managed to take control of the cargo elevator despite the utter lack of controls would only make it up to the lowest sublevel of the walkways and have another twenty yards or so of fully exposed running before she could reach the central spire, then she would have to go that same distance again to the next elevator, being a prime target for fire from above the entire time. With a secret organization this paranoid, Sara expected the elevator to the surface to be protected by machinegun robots, or maybe a moat filled with boiling alien acid blood.

Thankfully, it was just another dull corridor, with two Berkut henchmen flanking the elevator while pointedly staring straight ahead. Sara wondered if all this theater would play out every time she had to make a trip to the head...not that she had felt the urge so far. They were were really going to a lot of trouble to keep her in check, but even so she'd caught them flatfooted in her first attempt, and all of this felt like a belated attempt to make up for it with a show of strength. Now that she was steady on her feet and a little more used to operating these...things...they had put on her in place of her arms and legs, she felt the urge to **know** what they were so afraid of, to cut loose for real and see how far it would take her - but that was a bad idea, and she knew it. These people had put her back together, and they had made plans to stop her, so no matter how much pain she could bring with an alpha strike, what really mattered was getting past everything they could throw at her, and that...that was not going to be easy. So, tempting as it was to find out how much damage she could do if she set her mind to it, the outcome was likely to be death...or worse, if what they had already done to her was any indication. And however much she hated her current situation, she wasn't ready to gamble it on some very long odds just yet.

The second elevator must have been built to transport regular people and not bionic abominations of nature like her, because the cab had buttons and a display panel and no napalm spray nozzles in the ceiling. They took her a few levels up, but still about a half dozen floors from the top, and to judge from the labelling, it didn't go straight to the surface, either. So that made a total of three elevators from where she was to an exit from this underground facility, and God knows what they had on the surface. All to keep her from being free. Sara wondered bitterly how many Marines would still be alive today if the money that had been pumped into this James Bond jailgasm had been spent on body armor inserts and Humvee armor packages. _My tax dollars at work_, she thought, almost out loud.

After some more hallway that made Sara conclude that Berkut's most effective weapon was boredom, she found herself walking past individual doors, leading to those apartments Ruth had told her about. A half dozen of those later, there was a bend, with three more doors and Ruth standing in front of them. The labels on the doors were, left to right, a pictogram of a man, a shower head and a woman. Sara guessed that the female restrooms had originally been built mostly for the hell of it, but the single communal shower room made it clear that this place hadn't been designed to accommodate the fairer sex. There was nobody else here using these facilities, and come to think of it, nobody else on the whole level - of course. They'd cleared it out for her. Couldn't take the risk that she'd hurt somebody. God, what were they expecting her to do?

Ruth gave her a strained smile as she handed over a neatly folded set of gray sweatpants, t-shirt and jacket, as well as plain white underwear and a pair of sneakers. Sara pulled the package apart slightly, confirming that the t-shirt bore a large "ARMY" stencil in front - it would have been a little funny, if she had been in a better mood.

"The showers are all yours," Ruth said. "Take as much time as you need. We'll be right outside -"

"Right," Sara said.

"- in case you need help with anything," Ruth finished.

"I think I remember how to work a shower," Sara said.

"We're more concerned about the health effects," Will threw in. "I mean, you seem to be recovering well...very well...but you did have a weak spell earlier today. Showering can put additional strain on your circulatory system, causing dizziness, loss of balance or fainting." Noting Sara's look, he concluded with "We don't want you to get hurt, that's all."

"Gee, thanks, Doc," Sara replied. "I'll call you when I need my ass wiped."

"We'll be here," Ruth repeated.

Sara replied by rolling her eyes.

* * *

><p>Sara heard the door to the showers close behind her with astonishing clarity. The entire room was covered in white tiles, with only some subtle blue striping breaking up the walls at a little below eye level. In the middle stood wooden benches and steel racks, while the walls were lined with little cabins; tiled walls on two sides, a door made of milky glass. The door left about six inches of air underneath it, and the entire cabin opened to the top after seven feet, with the shower head above it. One corner housed a row of sinks with mirrors and power sockets, presumably for shaving and other grooming.<em> If heaven has prison showers<em>, Sara thought, _they probably look like this._

She wasn't there for the decor, though; she was there to finally have enough privacy to check herself. Ever since waking up, her whole body had felt strange in a way she found difficult to summarize in one word: the too-smooth skin, the dulled sensation of everything, the prickling all over that she imagined to be lost signals from nerve endings that were no longer there, how nothing seemed really cold or really warm anymore, but most of all the feeling that this was just something she was wearing over the remains of her real body. She had seen her arms and her legs and her face, but what about the rest of her? She put the small bundle of leisure clothes onto a bench and made for the row of sinks.

If Will had anticipated the next few minutes, he would have paid more attention to having the shower room stripped of the mirrors. Sara sought them out; a quick glance around the room to make sure nobody could see her, then she reached behind her neck and undid the twirled strings that held on her medical gown. She slipped her right arm out of its sleeve, then held on to the gown to cover herself while the other arm followed. She looked at herself in the mirror, naked and clutching the gown to her chest like a piece of armor. _Come on_, she thought to herself, anger already rising. _Get it over with, you pussy._

She lowered the gown slowly, scanning every inch of her exposed bosom for abnormalities. The ones she expected to find - a few spots here and there, marks that were a part of her body, part of who she was - gone. There weren't even any scars from her injuries. These were not her breasts; they were rosy-pink globs of smartskin-covered meat and silicone, disgustingly perfect shapes straight off the next batch of Barbie dolls. Sara's hands clenched the gown, tearing holes in it without her realizing it. The thought of William Anthros sewing these - these **things** to her chest and clapping himself on the back for a job well done set her teeth on edge.

That **bastard**. That smarmy, all-knowing charlatan butcher _**motherfucker**_.

She didn't want to go on. She really didn't, because she was looking at what this man expected her to believe were her breasts and her body couldn't decide whether it wanted to explode or collapse. She didn't know if her ragged breaths were raw anger or what little sobbing she was still capable of - almost certainly both. But being that she was already gnashing her teeth to keep from screaming, gritting them a little further and going on seemed like it could scarcely make things worse.

She calmed down just a little when she saw her belly; it was the same rosy baby-smooth bullshit as everything **he** had sewed onto her, but at least it looked mostly right. It was this part that he hadn't fucked up quite as badly that made her drop her guard just a little and her gown completely. Then her throat locked down, just clamped close, and she stumbled back. She couldn't cry and her body conspired to keep her from screaming just for the few seconds it look her to regain her balance. She stomped up back to the sink and slammed both hands down on it, almost smashing it out of its wall mount. She recoiled again when the faucet started leaking onto the floor from a tear in its line, but she was beyond registering that she had caused that. Her fingernails - now versatile and tough tools - found easy purchase behind the mirror, and with a deliberate move this time, she ripped it free, taking a few of the tiles it was glued onto with it. Her throat was no longer clenched, but her thoughts were so laser-like in their focus that she didn't have the brainpower to spare to make herself scream. She walked to the nearest bench, sat down with the mirror held before her, and spread her legs.

There was nothing there. Nothing but a smooth eternity of that goddamned rosy smartskin. Sara's anger didn't let her dwell on that image or the futile task of locating anything resembling real human anatomy in the doll body **he** had imprisoned her in. Her right leg snapped forward almost instinctively, delivering a kick that shattered the mirror into a hundred pieces. She shot up from the bench, tossing the remains of the frame in her hands across the room. Her body drew in one deep breath, and what muscles she had left tensed as her eyes narrowed. It didn't matter that her bionic eyes were still working perfectly well; her brain had lost the ability to see the scene around her as anything but a medium for her fury. She turned around and grasped the bench, wood already splintering under her vice-like grip. With the scream she'd been holding in for a minute now, she hauled the bench up and spun, tossing it across the room. It broke when it impacted the floor a few feet away, but the momentum was enough to carry into a shower cabin and smash the glass door open.

The screaming continued as she grabbed for the next thing in reach, which happened to be one of the metal clothes racks. She grasped the top bar with her right hand and one of its side bars with her left, then pulled it down and threw it to the floor, splitting a few more tiles. Slamming her fists down on a second bench broke its back, splitting it into two vaguely-connected pieces of potential firewood. She was well into completely tearing the bench to pieces when the fury faded just enough to let her hear things again. Someone was rapidly knocking at the room's door and shouting her name.

Ruth.

"Sara!" Ruth shouted from outside. "Sara! Talk to me! Are you alright?"

Sara tossed the few pieces of wood in her hands aside and got up. Her anger wanted to walk all the way up to the door, rip it open and give Ruth a real piece of her mind; but something in that primal part of her brain knew that, furious as she was, there was an excellent chance that she would do to the first person who crossed her path exactly the same as she had done to the room. It was that part that stopped her in her tracks and saved Ruth's life.

"**WHAT DOES IT FUCKING SOUND LIKE?**" Sara screamed, loud enough that she thought she felt her lungs pop. It was, in fact, so loud, that no other sound could follow, and so everything fell silent directly afterwards. Sara realized that she was only breathing hard because she expected to. If she wanted to - or rather, if she ever didn't hold back **enough** - then this mockery of a body would deliver destruction as long as her anger held out. Long enough to kill Ruth and Bledsoe's security team and Will Anthros and every last living being on this sublevel. Maybe even long enough to escape Wolf Creek.

The fury was well on its way to passing down into rage, and Sara's eyes locked to the right as her head slowly turned to the cabins. They had taken her here to take a shower. Alright. Then she would take a goddamn shower. After this little stunt, they were going to lock her in the darkest, thickest cell they could find, melt down the key, use the slag to fill in the lock, then round up and shoot everybody from the keymaker to the rebar contractor on up, just to make sure that she would never, ever be left free to rampage like this again.

So, fine. One fucking shower. She had asked for it and she was going to take it.

When she opened the shower cabin's door, she did so with enough force that it went almost all the way around before slamming hard against the limits of its hinges, returning to hang crooked from their damaged mounts. She didn't push the button that made the shower go, she punched it into the wall until it surrendered. And only then, with the hot water falling down on her and leaving something that could be mistaken for tears running down her cheeks - only then did the fury break, and her shoulder's fell as if the trusses keeping them up had snapped. Her left hand unclenched and touched the wall to help her keep balance, and she bowed down her head, water still running over her.

She couldn't cry. Dear God, she couldn't cry. She squeezed her eyes shut so hard that it almost felt like were going to pop, but nothing came, just the drops of water from above raining down. There was so much inside her that she had held back for hours, kept inside, postponed, just to **deal**. Just to survive this place, to keep going, to not roll over and show them a soft belly to sink their teeth into. But the disbelief, the defiance, the raw willpower that had gotten her this far just weren't enough. Not nearly enough. She had to cry. She just had to. And she couldn't.

"God damn them," she choked out. Somehow she was still on her feet, just like she was somehow still alive. Both were wrong.

* * *

><p>Outside the shower room, the color slowly - very slowly - returned to Ruth's face. A thousand different explanations brawled inside her head, but they all boiled down to a simple truth: leaving Sara alone with her new body was a bad idea. Ruth didn't delude herself into thinking she could have kept this from Sara forever, and maybe there simply was no way to fully explain the loss of her limbs and eyes that would have not driven Sara into a towering rage - but Ruth hadn't tried. She had left her patient alone. She had to fix that.<p>

And yet, a look across to Will Anthros showed that a different solution was already in play. The soldiers around him were busy checking the strobe mode on their gun-mounted flashlights.

"You are not going in," Ruth said, surprising herself by how uncommitted she sounded. The muffled sound of a bionic fist slamming through tilework provided the emphasis her words lacked.

"It's the best option," Will replied. "She could hurt herself - or others. Our first concern must be safety."

"No, I can talk her down -"

"Pah!" Will scoffed. It was the most forceful reaction Ruth had seen out of him yet, and it took her aback long enough for him to continue. "It is time to set boundaries, Dr. Truewell. If she behaves violently, then we will subdue her. None of us can work with her if we must fear that she will use tantrums to scare and manipulate us."

"**What?**" Ruth said. "Do you **want** her to feel like a prisoner? She'll shut down on us and then your bosses are never going to get her to cooperate. She'll **hate** you for doing this."

"She **already** hates me," Will said. "I tried to get her acceptance, but I know won't get it. I tried to get her cooperation and she's thrown it all back in my face. I can live with that, and I've lowered my expectations accordingly, but I **need** her compliance. _Oderint dum metuant,_ Dr. Truewell_._ Now let these gentlemen do their job."

"**No!**" Ruth snapped. "She's my patient now. I'm going in."

"You're emotionally compromised," Will said.

"And you don't know the first thing about how she feels or what she will do," Ruth said. "I do. And I've talked her down before."

"When she was weak and confused," Will countered. "Listen, Doctor, I respect that you're the psychologist here, and what you see in there looks like a scared and confused woman. But you saw what she did to Corporal Smythe, and that was three minutes after she woke up, when all she could move was her arm. If you go in there and you can't talk her down, and she lays a hand on you...she will kill you, and I don't mean to be lurid about it, but suffice it to say your funeral will be closed casket. Even if she doesn't want to, she's not in control of her augmentations, so right now, the only safe thing we can do is shut the system down and figure out where the rogue activation pattern came from. Start over and talk to her when we've made sure that the...accident...that started this whole sorry affair will not repeat itself."

Ruth scowled. "I'm not scared of her," she said.

"Then you're not thinking clearly," Will said. "But if you won't be stopped...then all I can say is that I hope you know what you're doing."

* * *

><p>Nothing was going the way it was supposed to for Sara Corvus. She was still on her feet, forehead rested against the cold wall tiles - and she wondered, if she banged her head hard enough against the wall, maybe...maybe this would end. She felt sick to her stomach, not just upset but genuinely about to lose her lunch. She could have tried to fight it, swallow it back down, maybe delay it for a bit, but Sara was not going to do that. Her body knew it had been pumped full of shit and it wanted to get rid of what it could - Sara sympathized, so instead, she just let her stomach do its thing - but then something [i]else[i] happened. Sara had puked up enough hung-over breakfasts into the desert sands, but instead of the sensation of her diaphragm and stomach clenching up followed by the disgusting rush of vomit, she felt her stomach...[i]squeeze[/i], like her body was rolling it up with a rolling pin. Her eyes went wide as her jaw locked open and the rolling sensations continued mechanically up her throat. Without gagging, without any effort at all, she felt a gentle flow of something metallic cascade from the back of her throat and pour gently out of her mouth. What landed on the floor were a few tablespoons worth of a dull silvery paste, hissing and steaming as it fought both ceramic and water. Her eyes widened at that, and she stumbled back against the wall of the shower, putting her arm over her face and trying not to breathe the vapors. The rolling in her throat had already stopped a few seconds earlier, and now her mouth was thick with saliva; she spat and hacked as she stumbled back, trying to get that taste of gently poached rebar out of her mouth.

**Her** arm. **Her** face. **Her** mouth. No, that was wrong. That was all wrong. This wasn't her. None of this was. She could only stare at that little heap on the floor and wonder what they had put into her that could have possibly created that. How much of her was left, really? Just a face and a voice and a brain?

"Sara?" she heard Ruth call out. "Sara? I'm coming in now, okay?"

The paste had all but washed away under the relentless assault of the shower; Sara backed herself into a corner of the cabin and crouched down, slowly sliding to the ground as she pulled her legs in front of her body. She watched and listened, through the curtain of water, past the shattered cabin door, out into the bathroom. A single pair of footsteps - 1.69 meters tall, 126 pounds, the hallucinations told her - walked across the floor. After a few moments, she saw Ruth walk into her field of view, trying very hard to keep the shock off her face and not quite succeeding.

Sara stared up at Ruth.

"Sara, are you okay?" Ruth said.

Sara said nothing, but shook her head.

"Can you come out and talk to me?" Ruth asked.

Sara pressed her eyes closed and shook her head, more vigorously now.

"Okay," Ruth said. "That's okay. You can stay where you are. Do you want me to stay where I am?"

Sara nodded her head slowly.

"Okay, I'll stay where I am," Ruth said. She crouched down and tried to meet Sara's eyes. "Sara, can you tell me what happened?"

"I saw," Sara whispered. "I saw what they did."

"And what happened then?" Ruth asked.

Sara scowled. "I got angry," she said. "And then I...I tried to cry, but I couldn't." Sara moaned, and bashed her head against the hard tile behind her - cracking a couple. "And then I tried to puke, and I...I [i]couldn't[/i]."

"Okay," Ruth said. "Thank you for telling me that, Sara. Can you tell me more about what made you angry?"

Sara shook her head.

"What did they do to you, Sara?" Ruth asked.

There were no words.

Slowly, Sara lowered her arms and slid her legs down, covering herself with a hand in front of her groin while letting Ruth see her breasts. At this distance, Ruth couldn't really see what was wrong, but she made no move to interrupt Sara - there was more, and it was going to be worse.

"They're not mine," Sara whispered. "He sewed these fake tits on me."

"And that's what made you angry?" Ruth asked.

Sara choked up and sobbed for a few seconds before she shook her head. "...not all of it..." she whispered.

"Sara, I want to understand what happened here," Ruth said softly. "Can you tell me more?"

Sara shook her head again, and tried to look away.

"That's okay, Sara," Ruth said. "It's difficult to talk sometimes. I can help you better if I know what made you angry, and Sara, I **want** to help you." Ruth sighed. "Sara, can you look at me?"

Sara slowly turned her head so she could look sideways at Ruth.

"I am here to help you," Ruth said. "You matter to me. Not the program." Ruth paused. "Do you believe me?"

Sara looked at Ruth for a few more seconds, then slowly nodded.

"Okay," Ruth said. "Now, please, let me help you. Can you...show me?"

Sara scrunched up her face, a tearless pantomime of crying. Slowly, she raised her right leg back up, moved it aside, then lifted her hand away. Ruth felt her hands clasp over her mouth almost instantly, and she let out a hard breath, feeling her own eyes mist up quickly.

_Oh my God._ To her professional credit, Ruth Truewell didn't cry, not immediately. Sara immediately slammed her legs shut again and started sobbing, the only moisture on her face from the shower she'd been trying to hide in. Ruth froze up, at a loss for the next step. What could she say to reassure Sara? What could she do? She felt her heart beat fast, her head swimming, that goddamn rush of panic...and took a breath. This was getting to her, but she had to get it under control. She had gotten it under control before, she was going to do it again. She allowed herself the tears - she was just human, after all, even Ruth Truewell was allowed to cry once or twice - and focused on keeping her voice as calm as she could make it.

"I'm so sorry, Sara," Ruth said, reaching for a handkerchief from her jacket. "I'm so sorry. And I want to help you, Sara. Do you want to get out of there now?"

"...is there anyone else out there?" Sara whispered.

"The soldiers," Ruth said. After a moment, truth won over discretion. "And Dr. Anthros."

Sara's face instantly went from despair to rage. "Get him _away_ from me," she growled, her voice escalating to a bellow. "Get him the **fuck** away from me!"

"I understand, Sara," Ruth said, keeping her voice level. "I will send him away. Then you can get dressed and we'll go back to your room, okay?"

Sara kept up her rage-filled glare, but after a few seconds, nodded.

"Okay," Ruth said. "Do you want me to help you get dressed?"

Sara shook her head.

"Okay," Ruth said. "I will go outside and wait. You can get dressed. Take all the time you need. If you need help with anything, just call for me. Alright?"

Sara nodded, then turned away from Ruth and continued trying to disappear into the corner of the shower stall.

Ruth got back onto her feet. Leaving Sara alone wasn't a very comfortable thought, but she wanted her space - and Ruth was starting to understand just how much damage she had suffered. It was enough to make Ruth queasy, but she kept it together. Kept it together for all the eighteen steps towards the door, for the door itself - the leader of the soldiers even held it for her - and then she looked at Will Anthros and still kept it together.

"Dr. Anthros," she said, "I need you to leave. Sara won't come out of there if she sees you."

"That's not your call," Will replied. "From the sounds of it, she smashed up half the room in there! I need to inspect her immediately. Do you have **any** idea what kind of damage she may have done to her body?"

Ruth took a deep breath, and slowly let it back out. "I saw her, she looked fine to me, and we need to think of her psychological state. She is reacting...poorly to some of the things that were done to her. She needs space. If it was not such a safety hazard, I would ask all of you to leave, but you, Dr. Anthros, need to leave, **now**. That is my opinion as the staff psychologist, and it would be best if you respected it."

"Things that were done to her?" Will fumed. "I saved her damn life!"

"And you failed to inform her that her injuries required the removal of her entire genitalia," Ruth shot back, her voice forced to a dangerously even tone.

"Well, I was getting around to it," Will replied hesitantly. "And...it didn't seem immediately necessary. After all, it wasn't a required procedure."

Ruth's hands clenched on their own. "..._what._"

"There were more important issues at the time!" Will said. "It was a nineteen hour procedure, and I already had to remove her digestive and urinary tracts, and…well, the uterus was obstructing my work!" he protested. "Removing the uterus and closing up the vagina, it cut hours off the surgery and prevented a lot of problems. Plus, it simplified the smartskin application between her legs considerably. It was the only rational option, you see that, right?"

"**No,**" Ruth spat. "No, I do not. You **sterilized** her and **mutilated** her body. That is how she sees it, and it is how **I** see it."

Will crossed his arms as his eyes hardened at Ruth. "Well then. I'm sorry that you see it that way, but I had to do it, it is** done** and I can't exactly fish it out of the biohazard trash and put it back in now, **can** I?" he replied, and rolled his eyes. "She's lucky that I was there to save her life, but sacrifices had to be made. You're the psychologist, make her understand that." He poked a finger in her direction. "That's **your** job."

**That **was the final straw for Ruth Truewell. Words failed her, and in their stead, her hands took action, her right grabbing his extended right wrist while her left shoved him around and against the wall. Before Will Anthros knew what was going on, Ruth had pinned up against the wall in a arm lock that felt like it was about to tear his shoulder out of its socket.

"It's easy to talk about sacrifice when it's someone else, _isn't_ it?" Ruth hissed into Will's ear. "Don't you **dare** speak about her - or **anyone else** - like that **again**."

Will couldn't answer that; he had some very important painful squealing to do. Just as Ruth started thinking about what she was doing, she felt hands on her shoulder, all but pulling her off Will. Calavera stepped in front of Will, while Ruth looked over her shoulder to find herself in the grip of Sage.

"Okay, fine, that's enough, pack it in," Ginsburg said, taking charge of the situation. "Jordan, get the doc out of here."

"She attacked me!" Will shouted as he regained his wits. "Captain, she attacked me!"

"Indeed, Sir," Ginsburg said, "that's why we're getting you to safety." As Jordan escorted the baffled Will away from the scene, Ginsburg turned to Ruth. "Well, he's gone. Tell her she can come out now."

Ruth gave a quick nod and turned back into the showers.

"Sara?" Ruth called out from the doorway. "Dr. Anthros is gone now. Are you ready to go back to your room?"

There was no reply; a few seconds later, Sara walked out of her shattered shower stall. She had put on the fresh clothes provided, but her hair was still damp and her head was bowed down, leaving her eyes to look at the tiled floor.

"Do you want me to help you out, or..." Ruth asked, letting her voice trail off.

Sara quietly shook her head.

"Okay, then...do you want me to go out first, or follow you?"

Again, there was no reply; Sara just walked past Ruth out into the hallway, leaving the psychologist to follow her. Outside, the remaining soldiers cleared some space for Sara to surround her, and that's the way they walked her back towards the central pillar and from there to the elevator. Sara said nothing on the way back down and let herself be led back to the isolated laboratory module. Ruth could hear the sigh of relief from the soldiers around her as soon as the door clicked into place and their "subject" was secure again.

"Come with me, Ma'am," Ginsburg said, catching her attention. "The boss wants to see you now."

Ruth sighed. "Of course. I suppose you can't nearly dislocate the boss' son's shoulder without some repercussions, no matter how much he deserved it."

"_Deserved_ or not," Ginsburg said, "the rules are the rules. After you, Ma'am."

* * *

><p>Ginsburg's team led Ruth back up the cargo elevator, past the central pillar and then into another elevator, stopping about two thirds of the way up to the surface. The walkway to the central pillar on this level was fully enclosed and led to a heavy security door, with a stencilled sign reading "Prof. Anthros - DIRECTOR". If the whole installation was Anthros Sr.'s fiefdom, this was his inner sanctum. Ruth took a breath when the door slid open, showing father and son standing in the office already waiting for her. Will favored her with a glare, while Anthros Sr.'s expression was more inscrutable.<p>

"Dr. Truewell," Anthros Sr. said, beckoning her closer. "That will be all, Captain," he said to Ginsburg; Ruth didn't turn around, but she heard his footsteps and then the sound of the door closing behind him. "I believe you know why I've asked you here," Anthros Sr. said. "Explain yourself."

Ruth nodded. "I was not made aware that Dr. Anthros had sterilized Corporal Corvus and..._altered_ her groin on top of the other procedures that had been performed. When I confronted Dr. Anthros about the necessity and wisdom of adding additional trauma to an already traumatic experience, he not only stated that such **extreme** measures were unnecessary, but such considerations were beneath him and that it was my job and my job alone to clean up the emotional disaster area that he created." She crossed her arms and glared at Will. "And I...lost my temper."

"You nearly broke my arm!" Will hissed.

"William!" Anthros Sr. barked; Will almost recoiled away from him before catching himself. "You have had your chance to tell me your side of the story. I think it is time for you to get some rest now. I will discuss our further actions with Dr. Truewell."

"...yes, Sir," Will said.

"One last thing, before you leave," Anthros Sr. said. "Dr. Truewell, I think you owe my son an apology for hurting him. Let me be perfectly clear here: I expect to two of you to keep working together in the future. I want this bad blood settled now."

Ruth quickly turned to Will and nodded to him. "I'm sorry for losing my temper - honestly. It's not a moment I'm particularly proud of, and I'm sorry for assaulting you."

"...apology accepted," Will said. "I was...also speaking in the heat of the moment, and I said some things that were not well-considered." With the honest part of the conversation over, he added the rehearsed line. "I look forward to working with you, Dr. Truewell."

"Good," Anthros Sr. said. "Good. Get some rest, William. We'll see you at the morning briefing."

"Yes," Will went. "Good night, father, Dr. Truewell."

"Sleep well, son," Anthros Sr. said.

Will slinked out of the office, past Ruth, without looking her in the face again. After the door slid close once again behind him, Anthros Sr. turned toward the wall and opened a wood cabinet, revealing what amounted to a small wet bar.

"I am inclined to dismiss this incident as a one-time occurrence," he said, pouring himself a glass of whiskey, neat. "Tensions are running high, hard choices were made, everyone is under a lot of stress. As long as nobody was seriously injured, I believe we can put today down as 'no harm, no foul'. A single event that does not represent the future. Am I correct, Dr. Truewell?"

"Yes, Sir," Truewell agreed.

"Good," Anthros Sr. said. "To be frank, I was expecting a bit of a culture clash, but I had no idea that it would become this intense. I suppose you really do feel for Corporal Corvus then, Dr. Truewell? Well, that is not a bad thing at all. She does need a sympathetic ear, and a woman at that, all the better. Just see to it that your hormones do not get the better of you again. I would hate to have you removed from the project over another moment of...hysteria."

Ruth's jaw tightened so much she worried she might crack a tooth. "Yes, Sir." She looked towards the door as an escape from this horrible moment. "Well, I should be getting back to Corporal Corvus."

"Indeed," Anthros Sr. said. "One more thing, before you leave, Dr. Truewell." He took a sip of whiskey, enjoying the taste for a few seconds. "Although my son had a rather unfortunate way of putting it to you, I do expect you to take responsibility for Corporal Corvus's behaviour and mental hygiene. I am aware that she has suffered tremendous loss and injury, and it is your job to help her get back on her feet in an effective and timely manner. You are not here to pity her, Dr. Truewell. What has happened to her has happened. This project requires that she become capable of moving forward again, as soon as feasible. Are we clear on that?"

"Yes, Sir," Ruth replied. "I understand what's going on here. I just ask that Corporal Corvus not be treated as a piece of lab equipment or some experimental animal. She's a human being - in fact, she's a Goddamn war hero. She deserves better than how she's been treated so far, and in my professional opinion, if you want her to cooperate with your program and be productive - and believe me, you can't force someone to do what you want her to do - then Colonel Bledsoe, Dr. Anthros, and yourself might all do well to consider treating her like a woman who's gone through a massive trauma, not a threat or just another experiment."

"Hm, I see your point," Anthros Sr. said. "We can certainly improve the human interface, as long as we do not compromise our security or our timetable. Get your ideas onto my desk by tomorrow and I'll see that we implement them as soon as possible."

Ruth nodded. "Can do. Anything else, Sir?"

"No, that would be all, then," Anthros Sr. said. "I look forward to your report, Dr. Truewell."

"I'll have a preliminary copy ready tomorrow," Ruth replied, then turned and walked out. Once she was a good distance down the hallway, she shook her head. "**Hysteria?** Really?"


	5. Chapter 5

Hello, sports fans! Sorry for the long delays - other projects and our lives have kept us quite busy over the last year. We're still here, though, and now that we're done with this chapter, we'll get back on the pilot rewrite plan. Keep the faith!

* * *

><p>After the meeting with Dr. Anthros, Sr., Ruth only delayed long enough to retrieve her briefcase from her office before returning to Sara Corvus' isolated lockdown ward at the bottom of Wolf Creek. Knocks and authorizations were exchanged, and the door pushed open wide enough to admit Ruth. Sara stood at the far end of the room in her Army-issue sweatclothes, wet hair still hanging down to either side and over her face. Her arms were folded in front of her chest, with her right hand balled into a fist. Thanks to her bionic augmentations, there was no sway, no shivering, but Ruth could see the coiled-up strength in every part of her, just aching to move. In contrast, Sara's head hung low, her eyes flicking from side to side as she scanned a piece of the floor, over and over. Her breath was almost imperceptibly low.<p>

Ruth carefully slid over to the table against the opposite wall from Sara's bed. "Hi, Sara. I'm just coming in here to...be here if you want to talk. Don't think you have to, though, I've got some paperwork that needs doing."

"Stop lying," Sara whispered through clenched teeth. "I know what a suicide watch is."

"That's what this is, for sure," Ruth said. "But...I'm also here if you want to talk." She looked at the two armed men standing in the room with her and Sara. "Do you want me to send these men outside?"

"Ma'am -" one of them started to say, but Ruth cut him off with a raised hand.

"I can do that, if you want me to," Ruth continued.

"Then do that," Sara said. Ruth caught in her eyes the same glint as in their first encounter, a prisoner testing her cage.

Ruth nodded. "Sergeants, wait outside."

"Ma'am -" the first soldier said again, but this time Ruth added a harsh glare to her interruption.

"Go. Now," she ordered.

The two guards exchanged a glance, but said nothing else; the airlock hissed open behind them, and out they went, sealing Ruth back into the lab with only Sara for company.

"What do you want from me?" Sara asked, now glaring directly at Ruth.

"Like I said, to talk," Ruth replied as she took a seat next to the table and started unpacking her briefcase. "Do you want to talk?"

"I want answers," Sara said. Her fists unclenched, her arms swungs free and she took a tenative step forwards. "No lies, no secrets, no sparing my **fucking **feelings. **Answers.** You got those?" Another step brought her around the bed - close enough to sit down across from Ruth, or to pounce at her.

Ruth wasn't fazed. "I do. Not all of them - Dr. Anthros hasn't seen fit to tell me everything - but what I do know, I will try to tell you." She paused and looked away for a moment, before returning her eyes to Sara's. "Are you sure you want to know **everything**? Right now, at least?"

Sara's body went from zero to sixty in an instant; before Ruth could even flinch, Sara had her hands on the table and tossed it to the side, scattering the contents of Ruth's briefcase onto the floor. "**Stop fucking with me!**" Sara screamed.

Ruth's reaction was immediate - she raced for the door. Not to get out, though; she jammed her foot against the heavy door and held it shut. "**Stay out!**" Ruth bellowed. "I am fine! Stand down!"

"Ma'am -" the Sergeant shouted again, this time muffled by the heavy steel door.

"**Stay out!**" Ruth shouted again, and after one more abortive attempt to push in, the door slid closed and locked itself shut. Ruth turned around to see Sara still standing in place, staring at her with a look of confusion on her face. "If you could refrain from throwing things, please," Ruth said with a nervous smile. "There is an emergency cutoff for your bionics - a pattern of flashing lights that disconnects your arms and legs from your brain. If you have another outburst like that, they will charge in here and hit you with it so you can be locked down - and neither of us wants that." She gingerly let go of the door. "So, please, Sara. Take a seat if you want to talk."

"...I don't want to sit down," Sara growled, but relented enough to go grab the table and right it again. With a heavy breath, she knelt down and quickly grabbed everything off the floor, roughly shoving it back onto the table. When she got up again, she pushed out a quiet "Sorry" before turning away from Ruth and eyeing the nearest wall for a good punch. "I'm sorry," she said. "I'm not...I swear I'm not like this all the time."

"You were...violated," Ruth replied as she retook her seat. "That'll make anyone angry - and depressed."

"Why am I here?" Sara asked.

"Well, that's a complicated question," Ruth replied. "You're in this room right now because people are afraid of you escaping or hurting someone in your current state. You're here at Wolf Creek because you're a participant in this military program." Sara scoffed and tightened her fists at the word "participant". "And you're in the program because you were sitting directly on top of an IED when it went off in Iraq, you were on the program's approved subject list, and Dr. Anthros, Jr. intervened to save your life." **That** drove Sara's rage even higher, but Ruth quickly replied to head that off. "I'm not saying that he didn't do other terrible, horrible things to you, but that is a fact."

"Participant," Sara snarled. "Approved subject. I don't remember signing up for this fucking raffle. So why? Why 'save my life'? Thousands of Marines got fucked up in this sandbox. Why me?"

"I don't know all the details of that, I'm sorry," Ruth replied, "but I know that it had something to do with the extent of your injuries, and your biological suitability for the implants."

"How many others are there?" Sara asked.

"Only you."

"Fuck," Sara said. "They couldn't find anyone who **wanted** this shit? Jesus Christ, all this...this fucking Star Trek bullshit to turn me into...what? You guys aren't the 'kindness of your hearts' type." She paused for a breath. "Do you have any idea what I can do if I just...go? I know I'm stronger and faster than...anyone. What the hell kind of job do they need someone like me for?"

Ruth shook her head. "I don't know, Sara. I was brought in here just to watch your psychological health."

"Then find out," Sara said. She turned to face Ruth again. "I don't think you like being in the dark any more than I do."

"No, I do not," Ruth replied. "But this is still a military project, and if I am not cleared to know, then…"

"Then they can get fucked, because I'm not leaving this room until I get answers to all my questions," Sara said. "They would have done this with more people if they could. They need me for something. I think it's only fair I know what that is. Can you work with that?"

Ruth nodded. "I think so." She scooted her chair a little closer to Sara. "Now, do you want to talk about how **you're** doing, Sara?"

Sara turned away again and crossed her arms in front of her chest. "...not so good," she admitted. "Have you ever -" she began, then trailed off, softly shaking her head.

"Ever what, Sara?" Ruth asked softly.

"Thought about killing yourself," Sara said. Her arms tightened around her. "When you walk on a bridge over a river...have you ever looked at the railing and wondered what happens if you climb on it and jump off?"

Ruth sighed. "I...that's a complicated question." She looked at Sara for a second. "Tell me about your thoughts about this, Sara."

Sara stayed in place for a few seconds, pondering her next action. The tension faded from her body and she turned around, drew up the empty chair and sat down across from Ruth. Her folded hands rested on the table, tapping it once, then twice, until she looked up and met Ruth's gaze.

"After the shower," she said, "when you left me here. I realized that I really was dead. Everything that was really me...got smeared over a back alley in Fallujah, according to you. I've seen what's left. And then I thought about where I was, and how everybody acted." She shook her head. "I'm dead. You couldn't do this to me if anyone still knew I was alive. Everyone I've ever met, everyone I've ever known, they all think I'm dead. My parents got a visitor from a smart-dressed Marine with a flag. So you can't let me go again. And I've been thinking about it, since I woke up, about what I'm going to do and how I'm going to get out of this, but what's the point? Best case, they kill me. Any other case...they strap me down and try to...try to **fix** me. Beat the 'me' out of their new weapon until even my shadow is gone." She lowered her head again. "And then I thought," she whispered, "how hard can I punch myself?"

Ruth took Sara's hands, and paused to see how she accepted that. Sara didn't react, staying perfectly still. "Yes, Sara, you have been declared dead, and I'm sorry about that, but...you're not dead, and…" Ruth put on her fakest smile, "...perhaps, someday that can be changed."

Sara scoffed. "Yeah, when they invent a time machine."

"But for now, you're not dead, Sara," Ruth says. "I can tell you, for sure, that your brain, your mind, those are intact. And I **promise** you, Sara, that I will not let them 'fix' you or change who you are," Ruth said as she squeezed her hands, her voice taking a determined edge. "I am here to protect who you are, and there is nothing more important to me than that. Understand?"

"I don't think you can keep that promise," Sara said, then looked up with the thinnest of smiles on her face.

Ruth scowled and curled her lip. "I'd like to see them try. After today? If they want to try to do anything, they have to get through me."

"Yeah," Sara said, with her smile widening. "All those Special Forces guys outside? You could hold them off for ten, fifteen seconds, easy."

Ruth let herself smile a little as her eyes softened. "You don't know everything about me, Sara," she said. "Besides, I managed to block the door, didn't I?"

Sara had to stifle an actual laugh at that. "You sure did," she said. The smile actually seemed to creep up a little before Sara forced it back down. "What I said earlier still stands. I'm not leaving until the brass tells me what's going on. And they better tell me something I like. Is that clear?"

"Crystal," Ruth replied. She opened her briefcase and looked around inside of it for a moment. "Uh, where is my pad of paper?"

Sara grabbed the briefcase and lifted it off the table, revealing the notepad (and some sheets of paper) beneath it. "Sorry about the mess," she said.

"It's okay," Ruth said with a smile. "So, what **exactly** do you want to hear?" she asked, pulling a pen out of her bag.

"Okay," Sara said, leaning back into her chair with a pause for thought. "Let's draw up our list." She grabbed her chair and scooted around the table next to Ruth, turning the notepad so they could both see the notes. "First, I need to see a complete file of everything they did to me. And I mean complete, I don't care if they think that's too technical, I'll have one of those assholes explain it to me. But I want to know about everything they did. Second, what do they want from me? What are they doing, what do they want **me** to do, where do they operate, who signed off on all this crap? And third - actually, you know what? Let's make point three about what **I** want…"

* * *

><p>An hour later, Ruth emerged from the lab with a <strong>very<strong> comprehensive agenda / list of demands from Sara. She wasn't sure how much of it she'd be able to get from Professor Anthros - even half would be pushing it - but it made for a good starting point, and more importantly gave Sara some agency in how she would be treated here. The nice feeling of accomplishment from that drained quickly, however, when she came face to face with Colonel Bledsoe outside, flanked by the two guards she had sent outside.

"Anthros's office," Bledsoe said, eyes fixing on her. "Right now."

Ruth stood there for a moment, debating what to say in response. There were a few different reasons for the stern, frustrated look on his face, and Ruth had good responses for all of them. Ruth knew that responding defensively would make her look just that, though: defensive. And so she kept her mouth shut and just turned on her heel to walk alongside Bledsoe down towards the elevator.

The conversation didn't improve much on the elevator ride; at first, Bledsoe didn't speak at all, preferring to stare dead ahead. When he did open his mouth, he still didn't look at her. "Three times today she could have easily killed you," he said. "Why do I get the feeling you don't care about that?"

"Why do you think she's only either docile or murderous?" Ruth shot back.

"Oh, I believe she doesn't want to kill you, you two being best friends now and all," Bledsoe said. "But bionic augmentations and a temper are a bad combination. I don't know how much she can control it."

"Treating her like a human being instead of a lab experiment would certainly help with that temper," Ruth replied. "Something that no one here seems to have been interested in doing prior to my arrival."

"She wasn't supposed to get out of bed until next week," Bledsoe said. "You tell me we've got a wounded soldier in there, and I believe you. But we've also got a malfunctioning high-tech weapon system in there, and that concerns me. There's only so much we can...contain. And until I'm sure what we've got on our hands, I want to limit the potential for accidents. I don't appreciate you overriding my orders for cheap points with her. You're gambling with more than your own life here, Dr. Truewell." He paused briefly. "Just think about it. Her opinion of you isn't the only thing that matters."

[i]Cheap points,[/i] Ruth thought dismissively. "Her mental state is all that matters to me - and if you're afraid of what she might do with your 'weapon system', then it should matter to you too."

"That's why we're going to see the boss," Bledsoe said, and that was that.

The boss was in his office, with his back to the entrance and a glass of whiskey in his right hand; the tumbler sat open on his desk when Bledsoe and Ruth entered the room. Professor Anthros swirled the whiskey in his glass one more time, then took a sip and turned to his subordinates.

"Dr. Truewell," he said, "the woman of the hour. Care for a drink?"

"No, thank you," Ruth said as she came to a stop in front of Anthros' desk, pad of paper in hand.

"Very well," Anthros said, putting his own glass down on the desk. "I know your answer, Jonas, so let's get down to business. Dr. Truewell, I've just finished reviewing your conversation with Corporal Corvus. Perhaps we should discuss what is appropriate to tell her and what is not before I let you loose again, hm?"

"If you want, sir." Ruth kept her voice even and non-threatening. "I am aware that Sara was not yet authorized to know about the killswitch encoding, but, if I may, Sir, what use is an electric fence if she doesn't know it's live?"

"It compromised our security posture," Bledsoe said.

"Well, let's not be too hasty," Anthros said. "Dr. Truewell's question deserves an answer. What use is the failsafe, indeed? Of course, you can conceive of it as a deterrent, a motivator perhaps? But what I believe Jonas wishes to express is that it is also our one reliable method of controlling her. I don't expect you to be familiar with the technical details of the bionic augmentations installed in Corporal Corvus, Dr. Truewell, so suffice it to say that within the limits of what is technologically feasible we have equipped her with the means to withstand and overcome all manner of...adverse influences. Not exactly bulletproof, but certainly much harder to kill than anyone else in this world. No reliance on external systems, nothing to jam, nothing to intercept. After all, it is foolish to design a weapon with a known weakness - the enemy will surely find out and use it against us. The failsafe, then, is something that we hope cannot be duplicated. A very particular countermeasure, if you will. And part of its value is - or at least, was - its secrecy. You've gotten to know Corporal Corvus, well, so have I, observing her. She now knows that this system exists, and has an idea as to how it works. Do you truly believe that telling her about it gained you a useful amount of trust, or is it - perhaps - not the case that you have given her just another obstacle to plan her escape around? Because if she does figure out a way to overcome it, then controlling her - stopping her, in the worst case - becomes much more difficult. Do you follow, Dr. Truewell?"

Ruth remained politely silent through Dr. Anthros' long and rambling explanation of something she was already very well aware of. "I do follow, Prof. Anthros," she finally said, "but her knowing about it has not compromised its effectiveness. She has no way of seeing with her eyes closed, and the failsafe has been tested to respond to even a half-second of the killswitch pattern. Unless she plans on making her way out of here blindfolded, it still remains completely effective - she just now knows that if she tries to run, we have a way of making her stop. Instead of seeing herself as all-powerful, she knows that we have something that can stop her cold. If anything, Prof. Anthros, I've increased our control over her."

"I see," Anthros said. "I take it you consider Colonel Bledsoe's men and the other security measures ineffective at deterring her, then?"

"Unhurt, yes," Ruth replied. "I think we'd all rather not have to subject her to a second surgery to repair any injuries she sustains trying to escape. If she knows we have a completely effective way of rendering her immobile, she's less likely to try to escape at all - which means we avoid having to use more forceful methods of keeping her here."

"I see you've given it some thought," Anthros said. "I will defer to your insight into her motivations in this matter, Dr. Truewell, but I would like to briefly discuss your motivations, too. In your conversations with Corporal Corvus, you were quick to put yourself apart from us and act as an ally to her. Yet here you are arguing about the most effective way to deter her escape, and then there is the matter of the extensive list of demands you helped Corporal Corvus draw up. Where do you see your goal in all this, Dr. Truewell?"

"What I said in the room with Sara - making sure she remains mentally stable," Ruth said. "That is what you brought me here to do, correct?"

"It's what I intend to keep you around for," Anthros said.

"Then I need to earn her trust," Ruth continued, trying to keep the condescension out of her voice. "Without her trust, my job is made considerably harder. She would refuse to talk to me, and the isolation alone would quickly worsen her mental state. And, to be honest, Sir? She doesn't like any of you, and I don't entirely blame her. But she needs someone on staff here that she believes is on her side." Ruth took this moment to extend the pad with Sara's list of demands to Anthros. "Speaking of which, here is a list of her demands. I've marked on there which ones we should extend, which we should deny, and which we should hold back as rewards for good behavior."

"I'm familiar with the demands themselves," Anthros said, taking the notepad and immediately putting it aside. "I will review your recommendations at a later time." His eyes turned to the glass of whiskey again, but he left it on the table. "Until I have finished this review, you will not reveal anything else to her. Tell her truthfully that I am making the determination, and that she will have her answer soon enough. The items I deem acceptable I leave to your discretion to distribute as you see fit - whether it is one big package, or doled out in installments. Objections?"

Ruth took a deep breath - she hated when superiors asked for dissent when they really only wanted agreement. "No, Professor."

"Then that is all, and I will see that you receive my review of the demands before the end of the day, Dr. Truewell," Anthros said. "Thank you for your candid opinions. You may leave now."

Ruth simply nodded and stepped out of the room.

Bledsoe seemed to relax a little with her gone, though he made no attempt to move from his position near the door. Anthros took it as a cue to take another sip from his glass.

"I need your threat assessment, Jonas," Anthros said.

"Corvus or Truewell?" Bledsoe asked.

"If you can separate one from the other," Anthros replied.

"Corvus will definitely be a big problem if we let her," Bledsoe said. "If anything, the file didn't do her justice. She's a planner, a manipulator, and I'm not seeing a lot of scruples."

"Sounds familiar, doesn't it?" Anthros said.

Bledsoe smirked. "You see where it got me," he said. "She's the kind of player I don't want on my team and really don't want on the other team. In the short run, we might keep her happy with concessions, but we already know what she wants and that's something we can't give her. So either we use her as long as we can and then dispose of her, or…" Bledsoe paused for a moment. "Or we change her outlook. But that's not going to be very nice for anyone involved."  
>"That's a choice we can make once we see how effective she is in the field," Anthros said. "And Truewell?"<p>

"Doesn't seem to be picking up on how Corvus is manipulating her," Bledsoe said. "Maybe she doesn't want to, maybe she really thinks she's doing the right thing. Insubordinate, and frankly incompatible with the command climate around here. She seeks to have soaked up Corvus's attitude towards your son, too."

"That's the risk we took bringing her in," Anthros said. "Someone with her empathy won't have the stomach for everything we do here, even if she is CIA. That used to mean something, didn't it, Jonas?"

"No comparison to the 70s," Bledsoe said. "I need her to stop undermining me, Tony. That just encourages both of them to keep pushing boundaries."  
>"Humor her for a bit longer," Anthros said. "The situation is under control for now - not how we thought it would work out, but all things considered, we could be in worse shape. With this...list of hers, the ball is back in our court. Once Corvus is more stable, we can work the limits back in. For the time being, Jonas, just make sure everyone else is safe. If Dr. Truewell wishes to endanger herself, then that's her choice, don't you think?"<br>"As long as it doesn't blow up," Bledsoe said. "Anything else?"

"One thing," Anthros said. "I want you to draw up a plan for containing Corvus without the failsafe."

"Acceptable losses?" Bledsoe asked.

"In the face of letting **this** loose?" Anthros said, then finished the glass. "We're all expendable."

* * *

><p>While Ruth was gone, Sara kept busy with the pen and notebook - but not in writing. Instead, she filled the pages with sketches. These were the places she had been, buildings and roads and bridges, memories that seemed far away now. Just for fun, she added little doodles of the people she'd met there in the corners of the drawings, but Sara wasn't a big fan of the faces she drew. Her eyes were on the structures, on the landscapes, and on the lighting - especially the shadows. Drawing with a pen, all she had to work with to give depth to the lines were little cross-hatches, tiny lines crossing one another, loose here and dense there, creating a sense of texture and light. They were also, not coincidental, a wonderful place to hide what she was really drawing: plans of the Wolf Creek facility. She hadn't seen much, but the few minutes of free view of the central spire had given her more than enough to start laying out the basic dimensions and shapes in her head. What she already knew were the routes the builders had intended for people to take, but what she needed to figure out were the ways nobody had thought of. That required getting a better idea of what this body was capable of - but that's what she ordered those files for.<p>

Sara's clandestine sketching was interrupted by the _thunk_ of the inch-thick locking bolts in her cell's door. While the reminder that she was a prisoner in more than just a metaphorical sense here wasn't welcome, the advance warning to hide her work was. Sara just managed to finish her drawing and put the notebook away by the time the door was pushed open by Ruth, her back against the doorway and her arms full.

"Let me help you with that," Sara said, jumping up from bed and heading over to help Ruth. Sara grabbed the thick stack of file folders from Ruth's right arm, but then her eyes fell on the styrofoam take-out box in the other hand. "On second thought, let me help you with **that**." Easily balancing the folders in the crook of her arm, she grabbed the container, undid the latch with her thumb and flicked the top off. "Okay," Sara said, "didn't know you could get takeout steak around here. That's neat."

"It's not takeout, it's from the dining hall," Ruth replied. Sara's excitement waned a bit at that before Ruth could continue. "But I made sure they cooked it correctly and didn't just turn it into shoe leather, so, enjoy."

"I think I will," Sara said and then walked back to the table. The styrofoam container went there, while the stack of files went onto the empty bed, where some of the files on top promptly slid to the side despite Sara's attempts to corral them. "Hey, did you bring any ketchup?"

Ruth gave Sara a raised eyebrow as she took a seat across from her. "Ketchup for a steak?"

Sara smirked at her. "No shit, my dad once ordered kobe and he put ketchup on it," she said. "Also, I thought if you add ketchup to those powdered mashed potatoes, that's almost a whole real vegetable, right?" She sat down at the table opposite Ruth, then unrolled the napkin to reveal a translucent baggy with white plastic cutlery inside. "Seriously?" Sara said, then shook her head. "No big girl knives for me, huh?"

"They wanted to take away your pens, too, and just give you felt-tip markers," Ruth replied as she folded her hands in her lap. "You're still on suicide watch, be glad you're not eating that with your bare hands." She still smirked at Sara.

"I'd eat steak with my feet if it came down to that," Sara shot back. With some effort, she cut into the meat, finding a last, brave garrison of pink meat surrounded by the forces of gray. "Well, I've seen worse," she said, then put the piece of meat into her mouth and chewed it, pushing it from one side of her jaw to the other as she evaluated the morsel. "Is your dining hall out of pepper?" she asked. "Also, chef's cuts require an actual chef to make them. But not bad, overall." After a moment's pause, she turned her attention back to Ruth. "What are you eating?"

"Not hungry, after this morning," Ruth replied with a shiver. She looked up at Sara. "You seem to be doing a lot better, Sara, than when I saw you a couple hours ago. How are you feeling?"

"Scared, nervous," Sara said, then added "Hungry." She started to cut another piece of steak, but stopped midway through. "Can we just...can I finish this before we talk?"

Ruth nodded. "Whatever you want, Sara." She stood up and walked towards the bed. "I'll just put the files in order for when you're ready to go."

"Thank you," Sara said. Then she went back to the steak, which now looked a lot like work. She sighed and resumed eating, accompanying the bites of semi-tender meat with sporkfuls of the bland mashed potatoes. The hunger wasn't a joke: the meal made her feel full, but not sated, more like filling a gas tank than a stomach. It would have to hold her over, for the time being. She dropped the dirty knife and spork into the styrofoam box, then latched it closed again. "Okay, so," she began. "What files did they give you?"

"Well, this was one area where I was able to get everything you asked for," Ruth replied, grabbing most of the stack of files to the table, and dropping them with a _thud_. "Here is everything we have on your augmentations."

"I guess I asked for that," Sara said. "What else?"

"I have the basics on what we're doing here," Ruth said, handing over a rather thin folder. "And I have your personnel files. Both ours, and your Marine Corps file." She kept her eyes on Sara as she mentioned the last one.

Sara seemed to be still processing that last one when she spoke again. "Can I see that?"

Ruth nodded, and silently slid the last file across the table. It was the only one that wasn't in a standard manila folder; instead, it was printed with a familiar-looking array of check boxes and acronyms to Sara's USMC-trained eyes, complete with the Eagle, Globe and Anchor on the top. As she flicked through the pages, her eyes froze on one entry.

CITATION TO ACCOMPANY THE AWARD OF THE BRONZE STAR WITH V DEVICE

FOR VALOR IN CONNECTION WITH GROUND OPERATIONS IN OPERATION IRAQI FREEDOM. LANCE CORPORAL CORVUS DISTINGUISHED HERSELF ON 15 NOVEMBER 2004 WHILE SERVING AS BRIDGE RECONNAISSANCE TEAM LEADER. WHILE ASSESSING THE STRUCTURAL INTEGRITY OF A DEMOLISHED BRIDGE NEAR FALLUJAH, LANCE CORPORAL CORVUS AND HER TEAM CAME UNDER FIRE FROM A GROUP OF HEAVILY ARMED INSURGENTS. DESPITE THE SUDDEN AMBUSH, THE CRITICAL WOUNDING OF THE TEAM'S MACHINEGUNNER AND THE NUMERICAL SUPERIORITY OF THE ENEMY FORCES, LANCE CORPORAL CORVUS ENSURED HER TEAM'S SAFETY AND RALLIED THEM INTO DEFENSE. IGNORING MULTIPLE GUNSHOTS THAT IMPACTED HER BODY ARMOR AND HELMET, LANCE CORPORAL CORVUS RISKED HER LIFE TO PROVIDE BOTH COVERING FIRE AND AIMED FIRE, KILLING TWO OF THE ENEMY NUMBER AND WOUNDING SEVERAL MORE. THROUGH HER VALIANT ACTIONS, THE INSURGENTS WERE FORCED TO RETREAT. LANCE CORPORAL CORVUS'S BRAVERY, QUICK THINKING AND SKILL WERE INSTRUMENTAL IN DEFEATING THE ENEMY FORCES DECISIVELY. HER DEDICATION AND COURAGE UNDER FIRE REFLECT GREAT CREDIT UPON HERSELF, THE 5TH COMBAT SUPPORT BATTALION AND THE UNITED STATES MARINE CORPS.

If Sara had been standing, she would have had to sit down, and if she still had tear ducts, she would have misted up; as it was, only the stunned look on her face remained.

"It's a good story," she finally said. "I guess the pogues are good for something." She looked back to Ruth. "What's in your file about me?" she asked.

"Mostly physiological data," Ruth replied, her voice dropped out of respect for Sara's emotions. "And the report on your...retrieval." She paused. "I don't think it would be very good for you to read that quite yet, Sara."

"Hm," Sara said, giving Ruth just a slight nod. "Okay, one more thing. What **are** we doing here? I know it's in the files, but just give it to me straight."

"This program - Berkut - was established to research the potential of human-to-computer technology," Ruth replied. "And the bionic hardware you've been...given, I guess, is the product of that research."

"That's great, but doesn't explain all the Army guys and their guns," Sara said. "Or why I'm here. What do you want **me** for?"

"Colonel Bledsoe is responsible for the Army guys and their guns," Ruth replied. "But why you're here? Well...part of it is to conduct final phase testing of the bionic hardware. Your augmentations are, to be blunt, a testing platform." Sara scowled and opened her mouth, but Ruth cut her off. "**But.** We are not the only ones developing this technology, and other advanced biotech, chemical, and high-energy technologies - and some of these groups are not very nice people. Colonel Bledsoe and Professor Anthros have allowed me to tell you that you will be asked to undergo missions to stop these technologies from falling into the wrong hands."

"I don't think there are right hands for this," Sara said. "And I've been picked for this instead of SEAL Team Six, because…"

"We could send them, or some other special operations forces, but without the augmentations? The chances of all of them making it out alive - or even completing the mission - are...not very good," Ruth said. "You can run faster, jump farther, and take more punishment than any normal human now, Sara. And that's what it'll take to stop these threats."

Sara mulled it over for a few moments, tapping her fingers on the table as she eyed the tall stack of folders containing the details of every violation these people had put her through. Even if Ruth seemed on the level - for a government agent in some conspiracy theorist's wank dream - there was no escaping the fact that she had been _kidnapped_ and _experimented on_ and _violated_ by these people. No matter how much they claimed to be serving the greater good now, nothing could make Sara forget what they had done to her. But, if this were true, and there were even _worse_ people out there with tech like this, or even more dangerous things…

Ruth's eyes were waiting patiently for Sara's return. "Give it to me straight," Sara said. "How much of this do **you** actually believe? I was in the Corps for a long time, I know that people like you lie to people like me to get us to do what you want all the time." She leaned back in her chair. "People like you said there were WMDs in Iraq, too."

Ruth winced at that particular reference. "Yes, that is not one of our prouder moments," she replied. "But this one, this is real. 2002, Barcelona. Somehow, ETA got their hands on a supply of volatile nanoparticles. Their plan was to hook half a ton of that into the AC of a subway station. If they had succeeded, it would have destroyed the lungs of everyone in the station. You've already met the men who stopped it - Captain Ginsburg and his team." Ruth pulled another file out of her briefcase and set it down before Sara: inside were pictures and reports backing up everything she just said. "So, yes, this threat is real."

Sara took the file and leafed through it. A terrorist attack in 2002 that never made the news? But the more she saw of it, the more she wondered just how much effort it would take to make a fake file this detailed, stage all the pictures, come up with all the dry technobabble to back it up. After today, after learning what had been done to her, it all didn't seem quite so impossible anymore. "Where are these weapons coming from?" she asked, finally.

"That's the thing, not all of these are weapons," Ruth replied, and pointed to a line in the report. "These nanoparticles were meant to be used in a chemical plant. They're perfectly safe, if used correctly." She paused to let Sara see for herself, and when Sara looked back up, Ruth continued. "There is no secret evil organization making super-science to destroy the world. What there are is many different groups, abusing what science has created to kill and terrorize."

"And you want me to go out and stop the ones your guys can't handle," Sara said. "I need some time to think about it, and to go through the files for myself. But." She nodded towards the stack of files on her bed.

"You want to know what's been done to you," Ruth said.

"Yes, I do," Sara said. She leaned over, grabbed one of the bionic augmentation files and slid it over the table towards Ruth. "So, how much of this crap do you understand?"

"Some," Ruth replied, not picking up the folder quite yet. "College was a long time ago, but I remember some of my biology. The technology, though...wouldn't you rather have someone who helped develop the tech explain it to you?"

Sara's expression darkened. "I'm **not** talking to that **creep** Anthros."

"No, no, I would _never_ ask you to do that," Ruth replied, her brow furrowing as well. "I meant...someone else."

"I'd prefer you," Sara said.

"Are you sure?" Ruth asked. "Like I said, I'm not really the best person -"

"Very sure," Sara said.

Ruth nodded, and in a return gesture, stood up and carried her chair around next to Sara. "Then we should get started." Before taking her seat again, though, Ruth walked towards the secured door. "And I should get some coffee brought down here."

"I'll take a tall latte with caramel," Sara said, not looking up from the folder in front of her, but when Ruth turned over her shoulder, Sara gave her a smirk.

* * *

><p>The next hours rushed past Sara, the passing time measured in the slowly shrinking stack of unread files. She had asked for everything and almost gotten it: nearly endless stacks of technical descriptions and cutting-edge theoretical background that might as well have been written in Cantonese. With Ruth's help, she at least pieced together executive summaries of the things neither of them could understand in detail, and the occasional excursion into basic electric engineering or materials science gave her something to slowly digest. In those moments, it was difficult to keep things in perspective. The technical achievements were remarkable, lightyears ahead of anything else in the wild - but they had made sure she would never forget what it was all being used for. The grumbling of her stomach and the increasingly frequent yawns from Ruth finally got Sara's eyes off the pages and onto a clock: 2:46 AM. She turned to the pile of still untouched files and fished one out at random.<p>

"Anthrocyte Cluster Implementation, Volume 3," she read off the title, then met Ruth's bleary eyes. "God, he has an ego, doesn't he?"

"...perhaps," Ruth replied, her exhaustion possibly having compromised her usual diplomatic tone.

Sara thumbed through the file. "Blah blah, super-healing, blah blah," she said. "What are you reading?"

"Uh…" Ruth's eyes wandered up to the top of the page. "Methods of translation from muscle neuron impulses to sub-millimeter bionic control." She paused. "How you can control your limbs so precisely."

"Fascinating," Sara said. "And I've got a feeling that even if I knew all the words, I still couldn't make heads or tails of most of it. I mean, just take this" - she dumped the newest file and dug into the 'read' pile for a moment - "here, the material specs. I don't have a PhD, but I know what compressive stress is and what these kinds of numbers look like in the real world. If this file is right, then the carbon compound they're using for the bones has a compressive yield strength just north of 130,000 PSI. That's close to titanium - the shear modulus in some directions is actually even better - except it's half the density. If this was on the market...they would be filthy rich. I don't know how they made it. I don't think anyone outside this base has an idea it's even possible. This is decades ahead of anything you can get off the shelf."

"Mm-hmm," Ruth mumbled, still reading her file.

"Ruth?" Sara asked, snapping her fingers. "Are you still with me?"

"Huh?" Ruth asked, then snapped bolt upright. "Yes! Yes, Sara, I'm here. That's…a lot of strength?" She gave Sara a questioning look. "I studied biology, not engineering."

Sara glanced over at the small graveyard of coffee cups on Ruth's side of the table. "Do you want to take a break?" she asked. "It's getting pretty late."

"I'm here as long as you want me here, Sara," Ruth replied.

"I appreciate that," Sara said with a smile. "But you can't help me if you're too busy trying not to fall out of your chair. You should get some sleep. The files aren't going anywhere."

"Are you sure?" Ruth asked.

"Very sure," Sara smirked.

Ruth nodded, and hauled herself up from her chair. "Good night, Sara."

"Good night, Ruth," Sara said. "I'll see you tomorrow?" A sarcastic chuckle escaped her lips. "It's not like I'm going anywhere, either."

"Sure thing," Ruth replied. "I'll be here...well, it's already bright and early, but I will see you in the morning." She turned and walked for the door, triggering the intercom to signal to be let out.

Sara heard the terse conversation between Ruth and the soldiers outside, as well as the door cycling open, Ruth walking out and the door sealing behind her, but she wasn't listening to it. Her mind, still well awake and fired up after everything, was set on the pile of files. With a soft sigh, she pulled another one out. Only three dozen or so left to go. Piece of cake.


End file.
